


° 

% 






O0 l 




BRITISH NOVELISTS AND TKEIE STYLES. 



BRITISH NOVELISTS 



AND THEIR STYLES: 



BEING A CRITICAL SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF 
BRITISH PROSE FICTION. 



BY DAVID MASSON, M.A. 

PBOFESSOB OF ENGLISH LITEEATTTEE IN TJNIVEKSITY COLLEGE, LONDON; 
ATJTHOK OF "THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN MILTON," ETC. 




MACMILLAN AND CO. 

AND 23, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN", LONDON. 

18-59. 



[The Right of Translation is Reserved."] 



^ 






^ 



R. CLAY ; PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

The substance of the following pages was de- 
livered, in the form of Lectures, to the members of 
the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh in the 
months of March and April, 1858. Passages neces- 
sarily omitted in the delivery are here restored ; a 
few passages spoken from notes are expanded from 
recollection ; and there are also some additions, 
especially towards the end. By these changes the 
Discourses are made to exceed by much the ordinary 
limits of Lectures. I have, however, retained the 
name of ' ' Lectures " by way of title, — partly be- 
cause nearly all the matter, as it stands, was actually 
prepared to be spoken ; and partly because the name 
may serve to account for anything in the manner of 
treatment or in the style that might not be con- 
sidered so fitting in other forms of composition. 
With respect to one of the Lectures — the third — it 
might even be obliging if the reader were to remem- 
ber specially that it was prepared for an Edinburgh 
audience. 



University College, London, 
June. 1859. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

On the Novel as a Form of Literature; and on Early 
British Prose-Fiction. — Page 1. 

(1.) Nature of the Novel.— The Novel a form of Poetry— Its relation to the Epic 
— Relative capabilities of Verse and Prose in Fiction— Points for Criticism in a 
Novel— The Theme or Subject— The Incidents — The Scenery — The Characters 
— Extra-Poetical Merits. (2.) History of the Novel. — Its late appearance, 
compared -with other forms of Literature— Classical Romances— Mediaeval 
Fictions— Early Italian, French, and Spanish Prose Fictions — Early British 
Romances — The " Mort d' Arthur" — Chap-Book Romances— Early English 
Translations of Foreign Novels— More's "Utopia," and similar Fictions — 
Sidney's " Arcadia," and Pastoral Novels— Boyle's "Parthenissa," and Classic- 
Heroic Novels — Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress — Mrs. Aphra Behn, and Novel- 
ettes of the Restoration. 



LECTURE II. 

British Novelists of the Eighteenth Century.— 79. 

Swift and Defoe— Intellectual characteristics of the Eighteenth Century — 
Preponderance of Prose in British Literature during this Century— The 
Fictions of Swift and Defoe new Prose forms— Swift's characteristics- 
Defoe's characteristics— Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne : their 
biographical relations sketched— Richardson's method in his Novels— His 



iii CONTENTS. 

Morality — Humour and Humorists — Fielding's Theory of the Novel which 
he practised— The Comic Novel— Fielding and Smollett compared and con- 
trasted—British Life a century ago, as represented in their Novels Sterne's 

peculiarities, moral and literary — Johnson's "Rasselas," Goldsmith's "Vicar 
of Wakefield," and Walpole's "Castle of Otranto" — Later Novels and 
Novelists of the Eighteenth Century. 



LECTURE III. 
Scott and his Influence. — 155. 

Edinburgh seventy years ago — Edinburgh since — Its Important Inhabitants 
in recent times — Scott pre-eminently the "genius loci " — Two most prominent 
features of Scott's mind — His Love of the Past, or Passion for History— 
His affection for the past, not for the whole past, but only for the Gothic por- 
tion of it— Patriotism or Scotticism of Scott — His special affection for Edin- 
burgh — Time and manner of his determination to the Novel— Review of the 
progress of British Prose-Fiction in the twenty-five years preceding " Waver- 
ley," or from 1789 to 1814— Twenty Novelists immediately preceding Scott — 
Lady-Novelists— Nationality in Novels— Revolutionary Novels : Godwin— 
The Gothic Romance School: Mrs. Radcliffe — Novel of English Manners: 
Miss Austen — Relations of Scott to his Predecessors — The Waverley Novels 
classified Scott the Founder of the Historical Novel — Limits of his histo- 
rical research — Is his medisevalism sound? — Defect of Scott's genius- 
Excellence of his Scottish characters — Scotland's obligations to him— Young 
Edinburgh. 

LECTURE IV.' 

British Novelists since Scott. — 208. 

Enumeration of British Novelists of the last forty-five years— Statistics of 
Novel-writing during this period— Classification of Recent Novels into thir- 
teen kinds— Sir Lytton Bulwer's Proposed Classification of Novels, and his 
own versatility— Fashionable Novelists— Dickens and Thackeray, as repre- 
sentatives of a new era in the history of the British Novel— The two com- 



CONTENTS. ix 

pared as artists — Compared as ethical teachers — Realistic Art and Romantic 
Art in Novels — Imitations of Dickens and Thackeray — The year 1848 an 
important year to date from, in literary as well as in political History — Per- 
severing spirit of Realism in recent Prose-Fictions, and application of this 
spirit to the representation of facts peculiarly contemporary ; Miss Bronte, 
<fec. — Great development of the Novel of Purpose, as shown in Sectarian 
Novels, Novels of the Formation of Character, Novels curative or satirical 
of Scepticism, &c. — Mr. Kingsley and the Author of " Tom Brown" — 
— Increase of the poetical spirit in Novels— Speculations as to the Novel of 
the future, and Desiderata in Novel Writing. 



LECTURE I. 



ON THE NOVEL AS A FORM OF LITERATURE, AND ON EARLT 
BRITISH PROSE-FICTION. 



If we adopt the common division of Literature, into 
History, Philosophical Literature, and Poetry or the 
Literature of Imagination, then the Novel, or Prose- 
Fiction, as the name itself indicates, belongs to the 
department of Poetry. It is poetry inasmuch as it 
consists of matter of imagination; but it differs 
from what is ordinarily called Poetry, inasmuch as 
the vehicle is not verse, but prose. If we wish to 
define farther the place of the Novel in the general 
department to which it is thus assigned, we shall do 
so best by referring to the subdivisions of Poetry 
itself. There are said to be three kinds of Poetry — 
the Lyric, the Narrative or Epic, and the Dramatic. 
This division is usually made with respect to Me- 
trical Poetry ; but it holds also with respect to the 
Prose Literature of Imagination. The prose coun- 
terpart to Lyric Poetry or Song is Oratory, or, at 

B 



2 NATURE OF TEE NOVEL. 

least, a conceivable species of oratory, which might 
be called the Prose Ode, or Rhapsody. The prose 
counterpart to the metrical Drama is, of course, the 
Drama in prose. There thus remains, as the prose 
counterpart to Narrative Poetry, the Romance or 
Novel. The Novel, at its highest, is a prose Epic ; 
and the capabilities of the Novel, as a form of litera- 
ture, are the capabilities of Narrative Poetry univer- 
sally, excepting in as far as the use of prose, instead 
of verse, may involve necessary differences. 

This association of the Novel with the narrative 
kind of metrical Poetry, this theory of the Novel as 
being, at its highest, the prose counterpart of the 
Epic, will be found, I believe, not unimportant. 
Apart from any hope it may give as to the Novel 
of the future, it is not without value in reference 
to our judgment of the novels of the past. No one 
seems recently to have had a clearer perception of 
this than Baron Bunsen. " Every romance," he 
says in his preface to one of the English translations 
of the popular German novel Debit and Credit, 
" is intended or ought to be a new Iliad or Odyssey." 
Very naturally, by those who take a more common 
view of the subject, this statement may be received 
as a philosophic extravagance. What ! a Circulating 
Library novel and the Iliad ; one of our thousand 



ITS RELATION TO TEE EPIC. 3 

and one stories of society in Mayfair and Homer's 
old story of the wanderings of Ulysses and Pene- 
lope's troubles with her suitors? But, as Baron 
Bunsen is demonstrably right in theory, so he is 
able to verify the theory by an appeal to experience. 
" If we pass in review/' he says, " the romances of 
" the last three centuries, we shall find that those 
" only have arrested the attention of more than one 
" or two generations which have satisfied this (i. e. 
" the epic) requirement." In fact, any unwillingness 
that there may be to admit his statement will be 
found to arise from the circumstance that people, 
in testing it, think only of the great epics, but think 
indiscriminately of all novels, small as well as great. 
When we think of the Iliad or the Odyssey, or of 
the " Jerusalem Delivered/' or of " Paradise Lost," it 
is certainly difficult to remember a prose romance, or 
at most more than one or two prose romances, that 
could for a moment be seriously put in comparison 
with such works of epic genius. But, on the other 
hand, if there are specimens of the metrical epic 
with which we can hardly dare to compare the best 
prose romances extant, there are as certainly 
hundreds of performances, ranking in the same 
general class of poetry as these epics, which we 
should as little dare to compare, in respect of genius, 

b 2 



4 NATURE OF THE NOVEL. 

with some of our best novels. Take, as an instance, 
Don Quixote. If we hesitate about elevating this 
great work quite to the altitude of the three or four 
metrical Epics which the world prefers to all others, 
we have no hesitation whatever in pronouncing it 
a work of far higher, and even of more truly poetic 
genius, than many works of narrative verse which 
have yet deservedly earned for their authors no 
mean reputation — the metrical stories of Dryden, 
for example, and the Fables and Tales of Lafontaine. 
In short, if we think only of good novels in con- 
nexion with good narrative poems, throwing equally 
out of sight what is inferior in both departments, 
the association of the Novel with the Epic will not 
seem so much amiss. At all events, in tracing the 
history of the Novel, there will be some advantage 
in recollecting the association. The phases through 
which the Novel has passed will be found to be not 
unlike those through which Narrative Poetry has 
passed ; and, in any particular country, the Prose- 
Fiction of a period will be found to exhibit the 
characteristics seen also in the contemporary Narra- 
tive Poetry. 

Perhaps, however, in studying more closely the 
relation thus suggested between the two kinds of 
literature, it is better to use the general phrase, 



ITS RELATION TO THE EPIC. 5 

" Narrative Poetry/' instead of the special word, 
(< Epic." For, though Epic Poetry is a term syno- 
nymous at times with Narrative Poetry, there are 
many varieties of Narrative Poetry which we distin- 
guish from what we call peculiarly the Epic. There 
is the metrical Fable, as in Gay and Lafontaine ; 
there is the light amorous or humorous story in 
verse, as in Lafontaine again and parts of Prior ; 
there is the Ballad; there is the long romantic or 
pathetic tale, or the comic tale of real life, as in 
Chaucer's " Canterbury Pilgrimage " and the rest of 
his poetry ; there is the satirical burlesque or mock- 
heroic, as in Butler's " Hudibras ; " there is the pas- 
toral or idyllic phantasy, as in the poetry of William 
Browne or the " Princess" of Tennyson; and there 
is the sustained heroic and allegoric romance, as 
Spenser's "Faery Queene." These, and still other 
forms of metrical narrative that could be named, we 
distinguish from the Epic proper, notwithstanding 
that in some of them — as in the tales of Chaucer, 
the idyls of Tennyson, and Spenser's great allegoric 
romance — we have specimens of poetic genius which 
we should hardly subordinate to the poems actually 
called Epics. Now, so it is in Prose Eiction. Though 
Prose Fiction corresponds to Narrative Poetry, the 
correspondence is that of two wholes which severally 



6 NATURE OF THE NOVEL. 

consist of corresponding parts. For each variety of 
Narrative Poetry there is, or there might be, a cor- 
responding variety of Prose Fiction. We have the 
Fable in prose ; we have the light amorous or humo- 
rous story in prose ; the short prose legend answers 
to the Ballad ; of romantic or comic prose tales of 
considerable length, but not reaching the dimensions 
of the Novel, most modern languages are full ; and 
we have also the prose burlesque, the prose pastoral 
or idyl, and the prose allegoric romance. Subtract- 
ing these, we have, or we might have, as the variety 
of Prose Fiction answering specially to the Epic 
proper, that serious and elaborate kind of compo- 
sition, styled more expressly the Novel, of which 
worthy specimens are so rare, and in which, as in 
the Epic, the aim is to give, as Baron Bunsen says, 
" a poetic representation of a course of events con- 
" sistent with the highest laws of moral government, 
" whether it delineate the general history of a people 
lc [the Iliad as type] or narrate the fortunes of a 
" chosen hero [the Odyssey as type]." Bearing 
all this in mind — bearing in mind that Narrative 
Poetry itself consists of numerous varieties, and that 
Prose Fiction contains, or may contain, varieties as 
numerous and exactly corresponding — we may repeat 
our former assertion in a somewhat modified shape, 



VERSE AND PROSE. 7 

and say that the capabilities of any form of Prose 
Fiction are the same as those of the equivalent form 
of Narrative Poetry, whatever that may he, excepting 
in as far as the substitution of prose for verse implies 
necessary abatements or differences, 

Verse or Prose, then — the matter of importance 
lies in that alternative. "What can Verse do in nar- 
rative fiction that Prose can not ; and, on the other 
hand, are there any compensating respects, in which, 
in the same business, Prose has the advantage of 
Verse ? 

In the interest of these questions, I might first 
point out that it is not so easy as it seems to say 
what is merely prose, and what is decidedly verse. 
Where the printer helps us, by dividing and arrang- 
ing lines according to their metrical structure, and 
by leaving wide margins and intervals, we recog- 
nise verse at once ; but beyond that point, and in 
among densely-packed prose itself, there may be 
snatches, and even considerable passages, which are 
good unrhymed verse to the ear, and have all the 
effect of such, though, for lack of the printer's help, 
the fact is not perceived, and though the author 
himself, not writing with a view to certain mechani- 
cal arrangements, may hardly have intended it. 
Conventionally, indeed, as soon as we get a little way 



8 NATURE OF THE NOVEL. 

clear out of rhyme, we draw a broad mechanical 
line, and then at haphazard call all on one side of 
this line verse, and all on the other side prose ; 
although in nature and in all natural effect the 
transition may be far more gradual, and much of 
what we call prose is really verse, acting as such on 
the mind, though latent and unaccredited. 

Setting aside this consideration, however, and ac- 
cepting the ordinary conventional distinction between 
verse and what we call prose, but which the ancients 
more significantly called oratio soluta, or " loosened 
speech " — a distinction which would be perceptible, 
although the penman or the printer were to neglect 
those mechanical arrangements which indicate it, in 
the main, so conveniently — let us proceed with our 
questions. 

What can Verse do, or what has Verse been found 
to do, in the business of narrative fiction, which Prose 
cannot do, or has not been found to do so easily ? 
I cannot profess here to exhaust this question ; but 
a few hints may serve our immediate purpose. 

Versification itself is an art, mastery in which 
wins independent admiration, and is a source of in- 
dependent intellectual pleasure ; and, caeteris paribus, 
a work delivered over to the human race in verse 
has a greater chance, on this account, of being 



VERSE AND PROSE. 9 

preserved, treated as a classic, and read again and 
again, or at least spoken of as if it were. Verse 
embalms and conserves the contained meaning, 
whatever may be its intrinsic merit. When, how- 
ever, a writer who has attained the art of verse by 
following a constitutional tendency to it, or who has 
recourse to it in any particular instance from a 
knowledge of its efficacy, does take the trouble of 
throwing a fictitious narrative into the form of verse, 
it is almost obvious that he sets out with a prede- 
termination that the matter shall be of a rich or 
serious kind, about the very best in its order that 
he is able to produce ; and also that, in consequence 
of the slower rate at which he must proceed, and 
the greater care and ingenuity which he must use, 
the matter, even without such predetermination, will 
tend to elevate and refine itself, when it is once in 
flow. Hence, in general, though not universally, 
high, serious, and very heroic themes of poetic in- 
terest beg, and almost claim, by right of fitness and 
precedent, to be invested with the garb of verse ; 
leaving to prose such as are of plainer or rougher, 
or less sublime and impassioned character. 

But, beyond this, and apart from mere custom, as 
determining the choice of the vehicle beforehand, 
Verse, from its own nature as Verse, exercises an 



10 NATURE OF THE NOVEL. 

influence in the origination or genesis of the matter 
that shall seek conveyance through it, — forms that 
matter, ere it leaves the mind that invents it, 
according to subtle laws of affinity with its own 
mechanism and its conscious powers. Verse wel- 
comes certain kinds of matter, and proclaims its 
adaptation for them; it rejects other kinds of matter, 
wishes to be excused from them, is intolerant of 
them if forced upon it, and resents the intrusion by 
the uncouthness of the result. To speak briefly, 
the kind of matter for which Yerse has an affection 
and for which it is fitted, is that which is in its 
nature general, permanent, fundamental, ever inter- 
esting, least variable by time or by place. The 
primary human emotions and relations, and the acts 
that spring from them and illustrate them ; the per- 
manent facts of nature and of life ; the everlasting 
generalities of human thought and human aspiration 
and difficulty — these are what lay claim to be sung 
or chanted, while the rest may be simply said. By 
a law of opposites, Yerse, the most highly con- 
ditioned, or, as we say, the most artificial form of 
speech, lays claim to matter the least conditioned in 
fact, and the most radically incorporate with the 
primitive basis of nature. The scene of every poem 
must, of course, be laid in some place and in some 



VERSE AND PROSE. 11 

time ; every poem must carry in it historic elements 
and references to contemporaneous particulars which 
are interesting to posterity; the costume and the 
circumstance must be Greek, or Roman, or Mediaeval, 
or English, or Spanish, according to the nativity and 
education of the writer ; nor is there any great nar- 
rative poem which has not a tinge in it of local and 
national colour, and is not full of social minutiae. It 
is nevertheless true that Verse, narrative or other, 
seeks the general under the particular, the constant 
under the varying. Moving as it does on wings, it 
may descry all and take cognizance of all, but it can 
rest but here and there on the tips and pinnacles of 
things. In Tennyson's narrative phantasy of the 
" Princess/'' we have local and temporary colour to 
some extent — the English lawn in the prologue, and 
the college of " violet-hooded doctors," and their 
feminine lectures on modern geology in the tale ; 
but how elemental and air-hung the whole story in 
its beauty, as compared with what would probably 
have been the result had a similar phantasy been 
attempted in prose ! 

It is but an extension of this remark to say, that 
there is an inherent fitness in Verse for what is 
highly ideal or poetic intellectually, and for what is 
deeply impassioned. It is from no mere accident, 



12 NAT URE F THE NO VEL. 

no mere deference to custom, that, when the imagi- 
nation exercises itself most purely and poetically, it 
submits itself to the apparent restriction, but real 
stimulus of verse, and that when the heart is power- 
fully touched in its deepest chords, the utterance 
rules itself by metre and rhyme. Perhaps, however, 
it is less in the general conception and conduct of a 
poetical story, than in what may be called the sub- 
sidiary imagery and invention, the poetical filling- 
up, that this necessity appears. There is hardly any 
theme or fancy so magnificent but that the outline 
might be given in prose ; and in our prose fictions we 
have instances of schemes fit for noble poems ; but 
what Prose hesitates to undertake as confidently as 
Verse, is to sustain a story from beginning to end, all 
the parts of which shall be little excursions in the 
ideal, independently beautiful and impressive, and 
never betraying the flagging of the fantastic wing. 
The " argument," as it is called, of the " Princess," 
or even of "Paradise Lost," might have had a fine 
rendering in prose ; but, in the slow conduct of 
that argument through all its parts, what a loss of 
subsidiary fancy, of poetic episode, of wondrously 
subtle intellectual combinations, of flashing images, 
of rich and luscious word-pictures, of rolling har- 
monies of sound and ear-bewitching cadences ! 



VERSE AND PROSE. 13 

What would have been substituted might have been 
very good, and might for other purposes have 
answered better ; but the aggregate would have been 
such as to alter the character of the work, and make 
it less uniformly ideal. 

In what I have said in behalf of Verse, I have 
virtually involved much that ought to go to the 
other side of the account. If, in the business of 
narrative fiction, Prose has its drawbacks, it has, in 
consequence, certain compensations. 

When the Poet, in Goethe's prelude to " Faust," 
is dilating to the Theatre-manager and the Merry- 
Andrew on the grandeur of his craft, and on the 
necessity of neglecting the common and the ephe- 
meral, and of striving after that which is permanent 
and will interest posterity, the Merry-Andrew very 
pertinently breaks in : — 

" "Would of Posterity I heard less mention ! 
Suppose Posterity had my attention, 
Who'd make contemporary fun ? " 

Now, " contemporary fun M is a very important 
interest, and Mr. Merryman's remark is capable of 
considerable expansion. Although, when the theme 
or matter is high and serious, it may be worth a 
writer's trouble to call in the aid of Verse, so as 



14 NATURE OF THE NOVEL. 

to give it the greater chance of conservation, there 
is abundance of very rich and hearty matter in the 
mind of every time for which there is no necessity 
for such preserving labour. There are hundreds of 
notions which the world may be all the better for 
having infused into it through the medium of its 
oetic sense, hundreds of circumstances in every 
time to which contemporary attention may be use- 
fully called; for the inculcation of which notions, and 
the indication of which circumstances, it may yet 
be wholly unnecessary to arouse from her repose 
always the most venerable of the Muses. In the 
great region of the comic, in particular, it may be 
questioned whether Prose has not the wider range, 
and the more searching, furious, and door-breaking 
licence. In Chaucer, it is true, and in hundreds of 
other writers of metrical fiction, we have exquisite 
wit and humour ; and from the fact that these 
writers have made verse the vehicle of their fun, 
their fun has the chance of being more than con- 
temporary. But what it may have gained in one 
way, it may have lost in another. On comparing 
our best specimens of humorous fiction in metre 
with corresponding works of humour in prose, I 
think this will be found to be the case. Eiotous 
humour, the humour that provokes laughter at the 



VERSE AND PROSE. 15 

time, and again, days afterwards, when the ludicrous 
fancy recurs to the memory; that mad kind of 
humour, in especial, which amounts to inspired 
zanyism, and whirls earth and heaven together, as 
if Puck were lord of both ; little of this, since the 
days of Aristophanes, has Verse been disposed to 
undertake. If any one apparition might here start 
up to contradict me, it might be that of Burns. 
But that, allowing to the full all that the recollec- 
tion of Burns' s humorous poems might suggest, I 
still have in view something different, will be obvious, 
I think, if we recollect simultaneously some of the 
humorous dialogues in Wilson's Nodes Ambrosiance. 
We might agree, I think, to challenge any master 
of verse to render, word for word, and idea for idea, 
without the abatement of something, and the sub- 
stitution of something different, one of the harangues 
of Wilson's Ettrick Shepherd. 

Let it not be thought, however,, that, in the busi- 
ness of fiction it is solely in the element of humour 
that Prose lays claim to powers indemnifying it for 
its concessions to Verse. As it has a freedom in the 
element of the humorous greater in some respects 
than belongs to Verse, so in the whole region of the 
historical, and whatever borders on that region, it 
moves with the more intricate and insinuating gait. 



16 NATURE OF THE NOVEL. 

Walking, as it does, on terra firma, and not merely 
poised on ascending and descending wings, it can 
push its way through the thick and miscellany of 
things, pass from generalities to particulars, and 
from particulars back to generalities, and come into 
contact with social reality at a myriad points in suc- 
cession. It is Mr. Hallam, I think, who remarks 
that, with all the wealth of social allusion contained 
in the works of the poets, and especially of the 
comic poets, they do not transmit to us so rich a 
detritus of minutias respecting the laws, the cus- 
toms, and the whole economy of the defunct life of 
past generations, as do the prose novels of such ages 
as have produced any. Other historians have made 
the same remark, and have even, in writing of parti- 
cular periods, declared that they would have been 
willing, as far as their immediate purpose was con- 
cerned, to exchange a whole library of the poets of 
those periods for one tolerably good novel. This as 
regards posthumous historic use; but it is evident 
that there is another and a distinct use in the con- 
temporary representations of novelists. If Prose can 
concern itself more intimately than Verse with what 
is variable in time and place, then a prose-fiction 
can take a more powerful hold of those eddies of 
current fact and incident, as distinct from the 



VERSE A ND PROSE. 1 % 

deeper and steadier undercourse of things, which, in 
the language of those who look more to the eddies 
than to the undercurrent, constitute a social " crisis.-" 
There never was an age yet that did not think itself 
to be in a "crisis," and that had not probably good 
reasons for thinking so ; but, seeing how rarely the 
" crisis " comes off, and how perpetually it is post- 
poned, it is perhaps well that there should be such 
a form of literature as the Novel, to engross in suffi- 
ciently poetic shape the humours that are succes- 
sively disappointed, leaving for the Epic the care of 
a longer accumulation, and the work of a wider 
survey. 

This leads us to the perception of a third faculty 
of Prose in the business of fiction, identical perhaps 
with that just referred to, but capable of being sepa- 
rately named. As Prose can be more intimate and 
minute in its historical connexions than Verse, so 
for the interfusion of doctrine or exposition with 
fiction, Prose has superior facilities. While Verse 
will assume and utter the great articles of human 
faith ; and while even, after a fashion of its own, it 
will admit of speculation, and the evolution of fresh 
maxim ; yet for all that partakes of the nature of con- 
tinuous reasoning or explication, and especially for 
efficient action in existing social controversy, and for 

C 



18 NATURE OF THE NOVEL. 

the administration of correctives to existing opinion, 
Prose is better adapted. Hence, although this is 
not the duty of fiction, yet, to the extent to which 
a prose fiction can legitimately outdo a metrical 
narrative in this direction, it may be said to give a 
more various representation of passing life, and to 
be, for not a few purposes, the preferable form of 
literary art. 

I have sometimes thought that much light might 
be cast on this whole question of the relative capa- 
bilities of Prose and Verse in fiction, by a study of 
the incessant shiftings of the Elizabethan drama- 
tists, and especially of Shakespeare, from verse to 
prose, and back again from prose to verse, in the 
course of the same drama, or even of the same 
dramatic act or scene. The study would apply 
mainly to the dramatic kind of fiction, but it would 
help also as between metrical narrative and the 
prose tale or novel. In the main, I believe, such 
an investigation would corroborate what I have 
said. When Falstaff has to talk (and what talk it 
is !) does not Shakespeare make the preparation by 
going into prose ? And what is the talk of his 
matchless clowns, but an alternation between broken 
prose and the wildest and most wayward lyric ; as 
if Shakespeare's very idea of a clown was that of 



VERSE AND PROSE. \ 9 

a being through whom nature blew her extreme 
shreds of deepest sense and of keenest pathos, with 
nothing connecting or intermediate ? In this habit 
or instinct of Shakespeare — and the practice is seen 
not in Falstaff and the clowns alone, but in all the 
similar characters — we seem to have a verification of 
what has been alleged as to the capabilities of Prose 
in the region of humour. The plays afford verifi- 
cations also of what has been alleged as to the 
capabilities of Prose in the regions of the historical 
and the doctrinal. It is remarkable, however, that 
it is not only on occasions of any of these three 
kinds, that Shakespeare passes into prose out of his 
accustomed verse, but that, as if bent on leaving his 
testimony to the powers of Prose, where these were 
least expected and least believed in, he has often 
committed to prose matter so splendid, so ideal, so 
poetical, so ghastly, that, but that the thing is done, 
and done by him, theory would have called it a 
hopeless treachery to the rights of Verse. Take, as 
an instance, Hamlet's speech about himself : — 

" I have of late (but wherefore I know not) lost all my 
mirth, forgone all custom of exercises ; and indeed it goes 
so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the 
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory ; this most excellent 
canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, 
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire — why, it appeareth 

C 2 



20 NATURE OF THE NOVEL. 

nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of 
vapours. What a piece of work is Man ! How noble in 
reason ! How infinite in faculties ! In form, and moving, 
how express and admirable! In action how like an angel ! 
In apprehension how like a god ! The beauty of the world ! 
The paragon of animals ! And yet to me what is this 
quintessence of dust ? Man delights not me ; no, nor 
woman neither." 

With such passages in view, and remembering 
also that, as Verse was the rule with Shakespeare, 
and Prose only the exception, he is likely to have 
informed us only what Prose could peculiarly do, 
and not of all that it could do, need we be surprised 
at that note of Coleridge's, on the " wonderfulness of 
Prose," in which, fancying the impression for the 
first time of a piece of nobly modulated prose on the 
minds of a crowd hitherto accustomed only to verse, 
lie protests that the effect of such a disclosure of the 
powers of oratio soluta, or " loosened speech," must 
have been like the revelation of a new agency, the 
bursting of a brave ship into a new and boundless 
sea. Need we shrink, either, from anticipating for 
Prose triumphs even in Verse's own regions of the 
imaginative and the impassioned, such as yet have 
hardly been dreamt of? Need we shrink from sup- 
posing that, as Prose is still the younger and the 
invading occupant, and as already it has chased 



THE THEME OR SUBJECT. 21 

Verse from the busy coasts, and the flat and fertile 
lowlands, so it may encroach farther and farther 
still, planting its standards along the looming line 
of the hills, and even in the mouths of long-with- 
drawing glens, till at length Verse, sacred and 
aboriginal Verse, shall take refuge in the remotest 
fastnesses of the mountains, and live, sad but uncon- 
querable, amid the mists, the cataracts, and the 
peak -loving eagles ? 

Settle as we may this question of the relative 
capabilities of the Prose Fiction and the Metrical 
Fiction, it remains true that they are closely allied 
as the two forms of narrative poesy, and that there 
are canons of criticism common to both. Let us 
leave out of account the minor varieties of prose 
fiction, and attend only to the elaborate romance or 
novel. 

In a prose romance or novel, as in a narrative or 
heroic poem, the first or main matter of interest for 
the critic, is the scheme, the idea, the total meaning, 
the aim, the impression, the subject. Is the idea 
great and deep, or is it small and trivial ? Is the 
subject slight and temporary, or is it noble, large and 
enduring ? The subjects that a poet or a novelist 
selects are, like those that a painter selects, alle- 



22 NATURE OF THE NOVEL. 

gories of his entire mental state, or at least of his 
aspirations as they are compromised by his circum- 
stances. What a man, left to his own freedom, 
chooses, out of the miscellany of things, as a theme 
for poetic representation, is something that strikes 
him, that has a meaning for him, an affinity with 
his character, his past experience, his education, 
his sentimental peculiarities, his natural or acquired 
mode of thinking. In all cases, therefore, the subject 
or theme of a poetic work is a promise for or against 
it. If, in a novel, the theme or idea is important, — 
if it is the object of the author to seize and to repre- 
sent in a mimic world of ideal characters and situa- 
tions the deepest peculiarities of the life of a time ; 
or if he selects some portion of past or present social 
fact, and throws that into his mimic world; or if, 
with some distinct metaphysical meaning in his mind, 
he casts that into symbolic form in the actions of 
imaginary personages, — in any of these cases the 
probable value and interest of his performance may 
be so far guessed beforehand. Without knowing 
anything farther, for example, of Cervantes' great 
novel than that it is a story of two characters, the one 
a lofty but crazed Idealist and the other a sturdy 
Materialist, wandering in company in search of 
adventures over a sunny land still covered with the 



TEE TEEME OR SUBJECT. 23 

wrecks of a rich civilization, and mingling with its 
peasants, its nobles and its gipsies — the curiosity is 
roused and the book seems worthy of attention. 
Or again, to state the matter differently, the novelist, 
as the creator of his mimic world, is also its provi- 
dence ; he makes the laws that govern it ; he con- 
ducts the lines of events to their issue; he winds 
up all according to his judicial wisdom. It is 
possible, then, to see how far his laws of moral 
government are in accordance with those that rule 
the real course of things, and so, on the one hand, 
how deeply and with what accuracy he has studied 
life, and, on the other, whether, after his study, he 
is a loyal member of the human commonwealth, 
or a rebel, a cynic, a son of the wilderness. In short, 
the measure of the value of any work of fiction, 
ultimately and on the whole, is the worth of the 
speculation, the philosophy, on which it rests, and 
which has entered into the conception of it. This may 
be demurred to ; but it will, I believe, be found to be 
true. No artist, I believe, will, in the end, be found 
to be greater as an artist than he was as a thinker. 
Not that he need ever have expressed his speculative 
conclusions, or have seemed capable of expressing 
them, otherwise than through the medium and in 
the language of his art ; nor even that, while engaged 



24 NATURE OF THE NOVEL. 

in one of his works, he need have been thoroughly 
conscious of the meaning he was infusing into it. 
At the same time, the probability is that uncon- 
sciousness on the part of an artist of the meaning 
of his own works is more rare than is supposed. 
Whatever Shakespeare can be found to have done, 
there is a considerable likelihood that he knew he 
was doing. 

Next to the general conception or intention of 
a novel, and as the means by which that conception 
or intention is either successfully achieved or ends 
in failure, the critic attends chiefly to three things — 
the incidents, the scenery, and the characters. 

The invention or imagination of incident is, at 
least, as important a part of the Novelist's work as 
it is of the work of the Narrative Poet. On this 
depends what is called the construction, the interest 
of the plot. True merit in this particular will be 
found to be but a detailed form of that merit which 
consists in the general creation of the story — the 
so-called "incidents" being events more or less 
consistent with the idea of that mimic world, whether 
meant as a facsimile of the real, or as an imaginary 
variation from it, which the author had in view 
from the first. On this head, therefore, I will offer 
but two remarks. In the first place, notions as to 



THE INCIDENTS. 25 

what constitutes a sufficiency of this merit in a novel 
are likely to differ much, according to the degree 
of the reader's culture. Some of the greatest works 
of fiction would be thrown aside as wearisome by 
those whose appetite is for "thrilling interest;" 
and, on the other hand, many novels of " thrilling 
interest" have no interest at all for those whose 
tastes have been well educated. In the second place, 
however, it is the habit of a large class of cultivated 
readers to find fault too thoughtlessly, in some cases, 
with a certain order of incidents which lead to the 
" thrilling " sensation — those, namely, which have 
the character of so-called improbability. In novels 
of real life, the improbability of an incident may 
well be its condemnation. If, however, there may 
be novels of other kinds, if Prose-Fiction is to be 
allowed anything like the range of Narrative Poetry, 
there is no reason why, to the extent to which it is 
allowed this range, it should not have the same 
liberty — the liberty of purely ideal incident in a 
purely ideal world. If for example, we never mutter 
this word " improbability M in reading Keats' s " En- 
dymion," or Spenser's " Faery Queene," simply 
because we know that we are in a world of fantastic 
conditions, then, so far as we admit that Prose may 
make similar excursions into the realms of pure 



26 NAT URE OF THE NO VEL . 

imagination, our attachment to probability of inci- 
dent must, in prose fiction also, be permitted to 
grow weak. As novels go, resentment of improba- 
bility of incident is a wholesome critical feeling ; but, 
if made absolute, the rule would simply amount to 
this, that there should be no prose fiction whatever 
but the novels of real life. From this I, for one, 
dissent, as an illegal arrest upon the powers of Prose. 
But, indeed, we all dissent from any such opinion. 
What else but a dissent from it is the distinction 
we make between the Romance and the Novel ? 
I have not hitherto recognized this distinction, nor 
do I care to recognize it very strictly, because, after 
all, it is one more of popular convenience than of 
invariable fitness. A Romance originally meant 
anything in prose or in verse written in any of the 
Romance languages ; a Novel meant a new tale, a 
tale of fresh interest. It was convenient, however, 
seeing that the two words existed, to appropriate 
them to separate uses ; and hence, now, when we 
speak of a Romance, we generally mean " a fictitious 
narrative, in prose or verse, the interest of which 
turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents;" 
and, when we speak of a Novel, we generally mean 
" a fictitious narrative differing from the Romance, 
inasmuch as the incidents are accommodated to the 



THE SCENERY. 27 

ordinary train of events and the modern state of 
society." If we adopt this distinction, we make the 
prose Romance and the Novel the two highest 
varieties of prose fiction, and we allow in the prose 
Romance a greater ideality of incident than in the 
Novel. In other words, where we find a certain 
degree of ideality of incident, we call the work 
a Romance. 

In Novels or prose Romances, as in narrative 
poems, much of the interest depends on the author's 
power of description, i t e. on his faculty in the 
imagination of scenery. Much of the interest, I 
have said ; but much of the benefit also ! A remark 
here occurs akin to what I have just been saying. 
In our novels of real life we have no lack of descrip- 
tions of the ordinary places of social resort and of 
all their objects and circumstantials — the interior of 
a house in town or of a mansion in the country ; a 
merchant's counting-house or the quadrangle of 
a college ; a squalid city-lane or the quiet street of a 
village ; the theatre on the night of a royal visit, 
or a court of justice during the trial of a great 
criminal ; the inside of an omnibus or of a railway- 
carriage on its journey, or the deck or cabin of 
a steamer on its river or ocean voyage. All this is 
well; and, in proportion to the fidelity with which 



28 NATURE OF THE NOVEL. 

such scenes are reproduced, we admire the descrip- 
tive powers of the artist. But is it not well also — 
in these days especially, when so many of us, cooped 
up in cities and chained to this part or that of the 
crowded machinery of complex civilization, have all 
but lost our acquaintance with our ancient mother 
earth, and hardly know even the overhanging sky, 
except in ribbands over streets and as giving pic- 
turesqueness to chimneys — is it not well, is it not 
medicinal that, as much as possible, in the pages of 
our novelists, as in those of our narrative poets, 
we should be taken away in imagination from our 
common social haunts, and placed in situations where 
Nature still exerts upon Humanity the unbroken 
magnetism of her inanimate bulk, soothing into 
peace in the quiet meadows, whispering of the 
unearthly in the depths of a forest, telling tales of 
the past in some solitary crumbling ruin, moaning 
her sorrow in the gusts of a moor at midnight, or 
dashing the eternal monotone of her many voices 
against a cliff-embattled shore ? 

It is, however, by his characters that a novelist 
is chiefly judged ; and the most esteemed part of 
a novelist's genius is his power in the imagination 
of character. In this is included the imagination 
of physiognomy and corporeal appearance, as well 



THE CHARACTERS. 29 

as the imagination of feelings, states of disposition, 
and modes of thought and speech. What a function 
of genius, whether in metrical poesy or in fiction in 
prose, is this of the creation of ideal beings ! Al- 
ready, in the very air over our heads, and in contact, 
nay in interfusion and connexion, with the actual 
world to which we belong, and which we help for- 
ward by our action, nutters there not another and 
invisible world of secondary origin, intellectually 
peopled by troops of beings that have taken wing 
into it, flight after flight, these three thousand years 
past, from the teeming brains of men and of poets ? 
All around us, and in the very air over our heads, 
do there not move and bustle at this moment, and 
even act upon us through thought and memory, 
myriads of beings, born at different dates — some 
ages ago, and some but yesterday — forming, in their 
union, a great population ; headed and ruled, let us 
say, by the Achilleses, the Ajaxes, the CEdipuses, the 
Antigones, the iEneases, the Tancreds, the Lears, the 
Hamlets, the Macbeths, the Fausts, and the Egmonts 
of our greater Fables, but divided also, like our own 
mortal world, into grades inferior to these, and more 
numerous and more ordinary as they descend; con- 
taining, too, as our own world does, wild and uncouth 
and exquisite or melancholy spirits, that shoot 



30 NATURE OF THE NOVEL. 

from grade to grade, or circle strangely by themselves 
— Pantagruels and Panurges, Jaqueses and Ariels, 
Redgauntlets and Dirk Hatteraicks, Mignons, Meg 
Merrilieses and Little Nells ? What are these but 
beings that now are, but once were not — creatures 
that once existed only in the minds of poets and 
inventors, but that, when they were fully fashioned 
there, were flung loose into Nature, as so many 
existences, to live for evermore and roam amid its 
vacancies ? Nay, from every new romance or fiction 
does there not take flight a new troop of such beings 
to increase the number of these potent invisibles? 
To what may all this tend ? We talk of spirits, of 
ghosts, of demons, as anterior to, and coeval with, 
human history, by virtue of a separate origin when 
Nature's constituents were once for all pre-arranged 
and rolled together in their mystic harmony ! Here 
we have them as appended on to human history and 
organically developed out of it ! In a metaphysical 
sense, these phantoms of the human imagination are 
things, existences, parts of the world as it is, equally 
with the rocks which we tread, the trees which we 
see and can touch, and the clouds that sail in the 
blue above us. May they not, then, have a function 
in the real evolution of the future ? 

There are other matters still which the critic is 



EXTRA-POETICAL MERITS. 31 

bound to attend to, in examining prose fictions. Not 
to dwell on the most obvious of these — as, for ex- 
ample, the merit or demerit of the literary style — 
I will mention but one thing to be borne in mind in 
the criticism of a novel. This is the merit or demerit 
of its extra-poetical contents. A large portion of 
the interest of every poem or work of fiction consists 
in the matter which it contains in addition to* the 
pure poetry or fiction. In Shakespeare or in Words- 
worth there is much that we value besides what is 
properly the poetry — philosophical disquisition, for 
example, or luminous propositions on all subjects and 
sundry, or fragments of historical fact and descrip- 
tion, introduced into the verse or the dialogue by the 
way, and poetical only in as far as they are put into 
the mouth of an imagined character, or connected 
with an imagined occasion. We call a work great in 
virtue of its pleasing or stirring us in many ways ; 
and, whatever is the nominal form of a work, we 
thankfully accept all kinds of good things that can 
artistically be brought into it. So, in a novel, if the 
writer can contrive, consistently with poetic method, 
or even sometimes by a slight strain on that method, 
to give us valuable matter over and above the mere 
fiction or story, we ought to allow all that is so 
given to go to his credit. As an example of a novel 



32 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

in which speculation, or critical and philosophical 
remark on many things, is blended in large pro- 
portion with the pure fiction, I may name Goethe's 
Wilhelm Meister. The novels of Scott and the Pro- 
messi Sposi of Manzoni will occur to you as works 
in which, along with the fiction, we get valuable 
fragments of authentic history. 

So much by way of theory of the Prose Fiction as 
an existing and matured form of literature ; and now 
for the History of this form of literature, more par- 
ticularly amongst ourselves. 

The first and most notable fact in the history of 
this form of literature is its late appearance, as com- 
pared with other forms. This fact resolves itself 
into a still more general fact — the historical priority 
of Verse to Prose. In speaking of these two modes 
of literature, I have hitherto represented them as 
modes existing together, and equally available, ac- 
cording to the option of the writer and the nature 
of his task ; and I have but incidentally hinted that, 
though coordinate now, they are not coeval. To 
this matter of their relative antiquity it is necessary 
now to attend. 

That Verse is the more ancient is a fact known to 
all. I am not sure, however, that we are in the 



ITS LATE APPEARANCE. 33 

habit of iconceiving the fact with sufficient distinc- 
ness or with a sufficient sense of all that it includes. 
The fact, it seems to me, amounts to nothing less 
than this, that Song or rhythmical utterance was 
the original form of all human speech, just as the 
mode of thinking and feeling natural to such rhyth- 
mical utterance was the original mode of all human 
consciousness, or as if, risking an analogous asser- 
tion, we were to say that men originally did not 
walk, but danced and leaped rhythmically. At all 
events, the earliest literature of all kinds — History 
and Philosophy, as well as Poetry, — was in the form 
of Song. To adopt an image suggested by the old 
designation of Verse as oratio vincta or " bound 
speech," and of Prose, contrariwise, as oratio soluta 
or "loosened speech," we are to fancy all kinds of 
human thought and mental activity as originally 
dammed up in Song, as in a lake with steep em- 
bankments — not only poetic or imaginative thought, 
and feeling or emotion, but also whatever of his- 
torical record or tradition and of speculative doctrine 
or philosophy may be conceived to have been in 
existence. By a natural law, this lake overflows and 
bursts forward in "loosened speech," — the stream 
throwing off, in its advance, first one form and then 
another of literature, according as human thought, 



34 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

becoming less and less homogeneous, is found to 
demand corresponding diversity in the modes of its 
expression. First, History is thrown off; then Philo- 
sophical Discourse is thrown off; then practical Ora- 
tory is thrown off : Verse relieving itself thereby, first 
of the business of record, next of that of speculative 
activity, next of that of direct social and moral sti- 
mulation — except in as far as in each of these kinds 
of literature, thus detached out of its own body, 
Verse may think it right to retain a parental interest. 
Bat, even after History, Science, and Oratory are 
thrown off, and Verse has retained to itself only Lyric 
Poetry, Narrative Poetry, and Dramatic Poetry, it 
does not retain these in homogeneous form and 
within the same channel. Not only do differences 
evolve themselves in the metrical forms of the three 
kinds of Poetry — the Drama loosening itself into 
a lax metre nearly approaching Prose, the Epic or 
Narrative reserving somewhat more of metrical law, 
and the Lyric remaining locked up in the strictest 
metrical bonds of ail ; but each of these varieties of 
metrical Poesy shows a tendency to detach from 
itself a corresponding variety of actual Prose. Theo- 
retically we should have expected, perhaps, that the 
order of detachment would have been as follows, — 
first, the Prose Drama ; secondly, the Fictitious Prose 



ITS LATE APPEARANCE. 35 

Narrative ; and lastly, and with greatest difficulty, 
the Prose Ode or Lyric. In fact, however, when we 
make our examination in ancient literature, we find 
the Fictitious Prose Narrative making its appearance 
before any extant specimen of the Prose Drama. And 
yet, at how late a period in the whole history of the 
Classical Literature this appearance takes place ! The 
Homeric period of the Grecian Epic was over ; the 
period of Pindar and the Greek Lyric Muse was over ; 
the glorious dramatic era of iEschylus, Sophocles, 
Euripides and Aristophanes, was over ; Greece had 
had her great historians in Herodotus and Thucy- 
dides, her great philosophic period in Plato and 
Aristotle, her noblest period of prose oratory in 
Demosthenes and his contemporaries, — all this was 
past and gone, and Greek Literature was in its 
dregs, before any specimens of the Prose Fiction, 
corresponding to what we should now call a 
Romance or a Novel, were produced in the Greek 
tongue. 

If we except Xenophon, as the author of the 
Cyropadia, and one or two others, whose names 
have been preserved, though their works have 
perished, the first Greek writers of prose fiction were 
Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius, and Longus — all of 
whom lived after the third century of our era. In 

d2 



36 HISTORY OF THE NO VEL. 

Latin, then the other language of the civilized 
world, the Prose Fiction had previously made its 
appearance in the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, 
and the Golden Ass of Apuleius — both of whom 
lived in the second century, after the list of the 
greater Roman classics had been closed. When we 
look into the works themselves, we can see that, by 
their nature, they belong to an age when the poly- 
theistic system of society was in its decrepitude. 
They are, most of them, stories of the adventures of 
lovers, carried away by pirates or otherwise sepa- 
rated by fate— thrown from city to city of the Medi- 
terranean coasts, in each of which they see strange 
sights of sorcery and witchcraft, are present at 
religious processions, private festivals, crucifixions 
and the like, become entangled in crimes and 
intrigues, and have hairVbreadth escapes from 
horrible dens of infamy ; sometimes even changed 
by magic into beasts ; but at last re-united and 
made happy by some sudden and extraordinary 
series of coincidences. There is a force of genius 
in some of them ; and they are interesting histori- 
cally as illustrating the state of society towards the 
close of the Roman empire ; but the general impres- 
sion which they leave is stifling and even appalling — 
as of a world shattered into fragments, the air over 



CLASSICAL ROMANCES. 37 

each inhabited fragment stagnant and pestilential, 
and healthy motion nowhere save in some inland 
spots of grassy solitude and in the breezes that 
blow over the separating bits of sea. One of the 
most curious features in them, as compared with the 
earlier classic poetry, is the more important social 
influence they assign to the passion of love, and, 
consequently, the more minute attention they 
bestow on the psychology of that passion, and the 
increased liberty of speech and action they give to 
women. Another respect in which they differ from 
the earlier Greek and Latin works of fiction, is 
the more minute, and, as we might say, more 
modern style in which they describe physical objects, 
and especially scenery. This is most observable in 
the Greek romances. It is as if the sense of the 
picturesque in scenery then began to appear more 
strongly than before in literature. In the Daphnis 
and Chloe of Longus, which is a sweet pastoral 
romance of the single island of Lesbos, there are 
descriptions of the varying aspects and the rural 
labours of the seasons such as we find in modern 
pastoral poems. 

In the modern world, as well as the ancient, the 
Prose Fiction was one of the last forms of literature 
to be arrived at — and this, notwithstanding that the 



38 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

fictions of the ancients survived to show the way, 
and to suggest imitation. 

For the first six centuries, indeed, of what is 
called the Mediaeval period, or from the sixth cen- 
tury to the twelfth, there was scarcely any literature 
whatever in any of the modern European tongues — 
these tongues not having then been formed, or not 
having extricated themselves with sufficient pliancy 
out of the chaos caused by the confusion of the 
Gothic with the Latin. In what remained of the 
Greek or Byzantine empire, stories or novels were 
occasionally written in the Greek tongue which 
still continued there intact — the most noted of 
these being The Lives of Barlaam and Josaphat, a 
spiritual or ecclesiastical romance of the eighth 
century by St. John Damascenus ; in which, under 
the guise of the adventures of Josaphat, the son of 
an Indian king, who is converted to Christianity 
against his father's will by the holy Barlaam, and 
at last becomes a monk or hermit, the Greek form 
of Christianity is expounded and a monkish life 
is recommended. Among the Arabs and other 
Orientals of the same period, prose tales were far 
more abundant. The celebrated collection of the 
Thousand and One Nights — consisting of tales of 
hunchbacks, merchants, and genii, which had been 



MEDIAEVAL FICTION. 39 

told in the bazaars of India, and other parts of 
the East, till they had become the common 
possession of the oriental imagination — were re- 
dacted into their Arabic form in the golden age 
of Arabic culture under the Caliphs of Bagdad. 
Meanwhile, in the European West, what literature 
there was — if we except heroic metrical legends 
of the Scandinavians and Germans of the continent, 
and a somewhat more various though still scanty 
vernacular literature among our insular Anglo- 
Saxons — consisted of writings, chiefly theological 
and historical, in the universal ecclesiastical Latin. 
Of this mediaeval Latin literature of Europe, the 
portion most nearly approaching to Prose Fiction 
in its nature was that which consisted in the num- 
berless legends of the Lives of the Saints — narratives, 
however, which were offered and read as history, 
and not as fiction. Prose Fiction, in fact, as we 
now understand it, reappeared in Europe only after 
the vernacular languages had pushed themselves 
publicly through the Latin, as the exponents, in 
each particular nation, of the popular as distinct 
from the learned thought ; nor did it reappear even 
in these vernacular languages until they had well 
tried themselves first in other forms of literature, 
and especially in metrical forms. The outburst of 



40 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

modern vernacular literature, simultaneously or nearly 
so, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in the 
various European nations, was, it is needless to say, 
metrical ; and the evolution of the prose forms out 
of their metrical beginnings took place by the same 
process as in the history of Ancient Literature, — 
more rapidly, however, and with some obvious and 
striking exceptions, in consequence of the inheritance 
of so much of the prose literature of the ancients, 
and in consequence of the practice which some of the 
vernacular writers already had in Latin prose. 

In the countries speaking the Romance tongues, 
or tongues derived from the Latin, the vernacular out- 
burst took place, as all know, in two distinct jets or 
streams of Poetry — represented severally, in France, 
by the Lyric Poetry of the southern Troubadours, 
and the Narrative Poetry of the northern Trouveurs. 
Out of these two forms, both metrical, of early 
vernacular literature (and, doubtless, the same 
double tendency to the Lyric, on the one hand, 
and to the Narrative, on the other, is to be dis- 
cerned in the contemporary efforts of the German 
Minnesingers) the various European literatures gra- 
dually developed themselves. 

It was out of the Narrative Poetry of the Trou- 
veurs, or out of whatever was analogous to that 



MEDIAEVAL FICTION. 41 

elsewhere than in France, that the Prose Fiction 
might be expected most naturally to arise. And yet 
what do we see ? Though the passion for narrative 
all over feudal Europe was something unprecedented; 
though the demand of the lords and ladies in their 
castles, of the peasants in their huts, and of the 
burghers in their households, was still for stories, 
stories ; though, to satisfy this demand, the minstrels, 
and those who supplied them with their wares, in- 
vented, borrowed, translated, amplified and stole — 
now rehearsing known facts and genealogies, now 
collecting and shaping legends in which the facts 
and personages of Mediseval History were worked 
into romances of chivalry, now catching up classic 
stories of the ancient world and reproducing Alex- 
ander as a knight-errant and Virgil as a great 
magician, now fetching a subject out of ecclesiastical 
lore, now adapting some Byzantine or Oriental tale 
which had been brought westward by the Crusades, 
now tasking their own powers of fancy for additions 
to the horrors of the popular Demonology, and now 
only telling comic and licentious tales of real life ; — 
yet, with few exceptions, all this immense trade in 
narrative literature, so far as it was vernacular and 
not Latin, was carried on in verse. Even the Fab- 
liaux or facetious tales of real life, were, in great 



42 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

part, metrical. This was the kind of composition, 
however, which tended most naturally to prose ; and, 
hence, besides that in all countries there must have 
been hundreds of very early fabliaux, passing from 
mouth to mouth as rude prose jocosities, we find 
that, in one country at least, the earliest form of 
classic prose fiction was after this type. 

A peculiarity of Italy, as compared with other 
lands, was that, though the taste for the narrative 
as well as for the lyric kind of poetry was felt 
there as strongly as elsewhere, and influenced the 
rising vernacular literature, the historical conditions 
of the country, in its transition through the middle 
ages, had not been such as to provide for that 
narrative taste a fund of material in the nature 
of a national legend or epic. Hence, in founding 
the modern literature of Italy, the genius of Dante 
employed itself, not on any national story, but on 
a theme wholly self-constructed, wide as the world 
physically, and morally as deep as the universal 
human reason; and, hence, when it chanced that, 
after Dante's poetry, and the passionate lyrics of 
Petrarch, the next demand of the Italian verna- 
cular genius was for a work -of prose fiction, the 
answer to the demand was the Decameron of Boc- 
caccio (1313-1375). These short novels of gallantry 



EARLY ITALIAN AND FRENCH NOVELS. 43 

— collected from various sources and only invested 
by Boccaccio with the charms of his Italian style 
— may be regarded as the first noticeable specimens 
of finished prose fiction in the vernacular literature 
of modern Europe. The type of prose fiction which 
Boccaccio had thus introduced, and which may be 
called the Italian type, was continued, with some 
variations, by his Italian successors of the fourteenth, 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — Sachetti, Cintio, 
&c. ; but, early in this last century, a new style 
of fiction, the so-called Pastoral Romance, was 
introduced in Italy in the Arcadia of the Neapolitan 
Sannazaro. 

In France, the earliest prose fictions, besides mere 
Fabliaux and romantic stories belonging to the 
common stock of the Trouveurs all over Europe, 
were versions of those tales of chivalry, relating to 
the exploits of Charlemagne and his peers, which, 
from the twelfth century onwards, formed the 
national epic of France. It was not till the fifteenth 
century that these had run their course, and that, 
to satisfy the tastes of the courtly classes of society, 
novelettes of gallantry, in imitation of those of 
Boccaccio, were introduced. Later still, France 
produced a perfectly original, and to this day almost 
unique, example of the fiction of satiric humour in 



44 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

the works of Francois Rabelais (1483-1553) . The 
f ' Pantagruelism " of Rabelais, and new batches of 
the short novels of love-intrigue, sufficed as prose 
fiction for France, until that country also received 
a Pastoral Romance of unconscionable length and 
tediousness in the Astree of D'Urfe, the first part 
of which appeared in 1610. 

No part of Europe contributed more richly to the 
early modern Prose Fiction than the Spanish Penin- 
sula. The wars of the Goths and the Moors in 
Spain had transmitted, in abundance, legends for 
a national epic, which had been embodied in long 
metrical poems, and in warlike songs and ballads. 
Some of these, perhaps, with other more ordinary 
narratives, had also taken the shape of prose. It 
was towards the close of the fourteenth century, 
however, that Vasco Lobeyra, a Portuguese by birth, 
seizing a subject which did not appertain in parti- 
cular to the Spanish Peninsula, but to the general 
fund of European tales of chivalry, wrote his famous 
Amadis de Gaul, called "the Iliad of the prose 
romances of knight-errantry." Subsequent Spanish 
romances of knight-errantry, in some of which 
Amadis was still the hero, and in others another 
imaginary personage named Palmerin, were number- 
less in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — the 



SPANISH NO VELS AND ROMANCES. 45 

most celebrated being that called The Palmerin of 
England. Meanwhile, the Spanish genius for prose 
fiction was showing itself in other styles. The 
Pastoral Romance — known in Italy, as we have seen, 
as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century — 
is believed to have been more peculiarly of Por- 
tuguese origin ; and, after it had been cultivated by 
Portuguese poets, it was naturalized in Castilian 
prose by Montemayor, a writer of Portuguese birth 
(1520-1562). The Diana of Montemayor had 
nearly as many imitators as the Amadis de Gaul, 
and attained nearly as great celebrity out of Spain. 
A third type of Spanish prose fiction was the so- 
called Picaresque Novel, or novel of clever roguery, 
the first specimen of which was the Life of Lazarillo 
de Tonnes, by Diego Mendoza, one of the most 
celebrated statesmen of the reign of Charles V. 
(1503-1575). Among the many Spanish imitations 
of this peculiar style of comic prose fiction — which 
other countries were to borrow from Spain — the best 
known is Don Guzman de Alfarache, published in 
1599. It was a few years after this that Cervantes, 
after having trained himself in almost every kind of 
literature then known in Spain, the Drama and the 
Pastoral Romance included, united all the previous 
kinds of Spanish prose fiction, and superseded them 



46 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

all, in his immortal Don Quixote. The first part of 
this masterpiece was published in 1605 ; the last in 
1615, the year before the author's death. 1 

Thus, by the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
Prose Fiction, in most of its leading types — that of 
the short amusing novel of gallantry, that of the 
romance of enchantment and heroic chivalry, that 
of the pastoral romance, that of the riotous satire, 
and that of the picaresque novel — was an established 
form of literature, existing side by side with Narra- 
tive Poetry, Lyrical Poetry, Dramatic Poetry, History, 
&c, in the various Romance tongues of Europe. In 
Germany, where the vernacular development did not 
proceed so fast, there were yet, by this time, charac- 
teristic specimens of prose fiction, as well as of 
verse, in popular tales of Gothic demonology, and 
in pithy satiric and moral fables, expressive of the 
German common sense. 

In no country was the impulse to the narrative 
form of literature earlier or stronger than in Britain. 
The Norman Conquest, interrupting the native 



i It is right that the reader should know that I am not 
personally acquainted with all the works of early foreign prose 
fiction mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, but chiefly 
with those of Boccaccio, Rabelais, and Cervantes. 



EARLY BRITISH ROMANCES. 47 

tendencies of the Saxons, which had been rather to 
the practical and ethical, handed over the initiation 
and conduct of a new literature in England to those 
who were preeminently the Trouveurs of Europe — 
i.e. to the Norman minstrels. Perhaps more of the 
distinguished Norman Trouveurs of the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries were born on the English than 
on the French side of the Channel ; and so powerful 
was the infusion into England of the Trouveur or 
Narrative, as distinct from the Troubadour or Lyrical 
spirit, that, in the whole course of English literature 
"since, one can see the narrative impulse ruling and 
the lyric subordinate. The passion for narration 
showed itself not in the French Trouveurs alone, 
but also in their brethren, the Latin Chroniclers. 
In part, indeed, the Trouveurs were also Chroniclers, 
writing in French those Bruts or legendary genea- 
logies of Britain, and those records of recent 
Norman exploits, which also furnished matter to the 
prose chroniclers in Latin. But their characteristic 
productions were the French metrical romances. 
For such Romances they had an unusually rich fund 
of topics. Besides the common classical and me- 
diaeval subjects of Alexander, Charlemagne and the 
like, and besides subjects invented by their own 
Norman imagination, or suggested by incidents of 



48 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

Norman history, or derived from their ancestral 
stock of Scandinavian legend, they came into posses- 
sion, in virtue of their occupation of British ground, 
of that wonderful body of Arthurian romance which, 
bequeathed, in its original, by the Welsh and Armo- 
rican bards, and afterwards compiled in Latin by 
the Welsh pen of Geoffrey of Monmouth, was to 
receive expansions and modifications at the will of 
future poets. Metrical French Romances of King 
Alexander, King Horn, Havelok the Dane, &c, and 
French Romances of Chivalry about Arthur and his 
Knights of the Round Table, were the entertainment 
of the Norman lords and their retainers as long as 
French was the dominant tongue in England. Some 
of these Romances, with lighter Fabliaux, had passed 
into French prose versions. The earliest English 
narrative poetry consisted mainly of translations of 
these Romances for the behoof of those who did 
not understand French; and, as was natural, such 
English translations became more common as English 
asserted its right as the national tongue. Even 
after Chaucer (1328-1400), forsaking French, as 
the language of a waning class, and lending the 
strength of his genius to the national English, had 
provided narrative entertainment of a more elabo- 
rate and modern kind in his tales of real life, and 



THE MORT & ARTHUR. 49 

his romantic stories borrowed from French, Italian, 
and classical sources, the romance of chivalry, with 
its giants, enchantments, tournaments, and wonder- 
ful adventures of heroic knights, continued popular 
in its prose form. The cycle of this Romance of 
British legend may be considered to have been 
completed in 1485, when Sir Thomas Malory's Mort 
d' Arthur, or compilation of Arthurian Romances 
" oute of certeyn bookes of Frensshe," was issued 
from Caxton's press. 

Malory's Mort d'Arthur, or History of King Arthur 
and of the Knights of the Round Table, is one of those 
books the full effect and significance of which in the 
history of our literature it would require much 
research and much disquisition to exhaust. On the 
origin of the book alone there might be a historical 
essay of much interest. How the original ground- 
work came forth to the world in 1147, in the legends 
of Arthur and Merlin, which formed part of the 
Welsh Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin " History of 
the Britons," the materials of which he professed 
to have derived from Breton tradition and from 
Breton writings of which there is no trace; how 
Geoffrey's book at once seized the imagination of 
the age, and his legends were appropriated, am- 
plified, and developed by contemporary metrical 

E 



50 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

chroniclers, and especially by the Anglo-Normans, 
Gaimar and Wace, and the Saxon Layamon ; how, 
within the next century, new tissues of chivalrous 
and religious romance were woven out of the material 
thus accumulated, or attached to it and woven into 
it, by Anglo-Norman poets, themselves not wholly 
the inventors of what they wrote, but deriving the 
incidents and the names which they worked up from 
legend already afloat, — Robert de Borron adding the 
Roman du St. Graal and the developed History of 
Merlin, and "Walter Mapes adding the Adventures 
of Sir Lancelot, the Queste du St. Graal, and the 
Mort d'Arthure specially so called, and two later 
writers, Lucas de Gast and Helie de Borron, sup- 
plying later fragments in the Romances of Sir Tris- 
tram and other knights ; how the total mass so 
aggregated was shaped, adjusted, and again mor- 
selled out in parts by subsequent minstrels and 
writers in France and in England, gradually loosen- 
ing itself from the restraint of verse, and flowing into 
oral prose; and how, at length, an unknown Sir 
Thomas Malory, living in the reign of Edward IV., 
did his service to posterity by recompiling the whole 
in connected English, according to his own taste, and 
perhaps for his own amusement, in some castle in 
the country, or old city-dwelling, where he had the 



TEE MORT D' ARTHUR. 51 

French scrolls and folios about him, and so provided 
Caxton with his copy : — here is a story of a book 
which might employ ingenuity as well as the story 
of the Homeric poems, and in connexion with which 
there might be discussed some of the same problems. 
It is as if the book were the production of no one 
mind, nor even of a score of successive minds, nor 
even of any one place or time, but were a rolling 
body of British-Norman legend, a representative 
bequest into the British air and the air overhanging 
the English Channel, from the collective brain and 
imagination that had tenanted that region through 
a definite range of vanished centuries. " After that 
u I had accomplysshed and fynysshed dyvers hys- 
" toryes," says Caxton, " as well of contemplacyon 
" as of other hystoryal and worldly actes of grete 
" conquerours and prynces, and also certeyn bookes 
" of ensaumples and doctryne, many noble and 
" dyvers gentylmen of this royame of England camen 
" and demaunded me many and oftymes wherefore 
" that I have not do make and emprynte the 
" noble hy story e of the Saynt Greal, and of the 
" moost renouned crysten kyng, fyrst and chyef of 
H the thre best crysten and worthy, Kyng Arthur, 
" whyche ought moost to be remembred emonge us 
" Englysshe men tofore al other crysten kynges." 
E 2 



52 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

Caxton answered that one of his reasons was, " that 
" dyvers men holde opynyon that there was no suche 
" Arthur, and that alle suche bookes as been maad of 
" hym ben but fayned and fables, bycause that somme 
" cronycles make of hym no mencyon ne remembre 
" hym noo thing ne of his knyghtes." The anti- 
quarian arguments used by the gentlemen in reply 
seem to have but half convinced Caxton of the possi- 
bility that Arthur had ever had a real existence; 
but, on other grounds, he was willing to print the 
book. " For to passe the tyme," he says, " this 
" book shal be plesaunte to rede in, but for to gyve 
" fayth and byleve that al is trewe that is contayned 
(i herein, ye be at your lyberte ; but al is wryton for 
" our doctryne, and for to beware that we falle not 
" to vyce ne synne, but texercyse and folowe vert a, 
" by whyche we may come and atteyne to good fame 
" and renomme in thys lyf, and after thys shorte and 
" transytorye lyf to come unto everlastyng blysse in 
" heven." The book fully answers to this descrip- 
tion. All in it is ideal, elemental, perfectly and 
purely imaginative ; and yet all rests on a basis of 
what is eternal and general in human nature and in 
man's spiritual and social experience, so that, to use 
Caxton' s very happy enumeration, " herein may be 
" seen noble chyvalrye, curtosye, humanyte, frend- 



THE MORT D' ARTHUR. 53 

" lynesse, hardynesse, love, frendshyp, cowardyse, 
" murdre, hate, vertue, synne." We are led over 
a vague land of plain and hill, lake and forest, 
which we know to be Britain, and which contains 
towns and fair castles ; over this dreamland we 
pursue valiant knights riding in quest of adventures, 
j listing with each other whenever they meet, rescuing 
enchanted maidens, and combating with strange 
shapes and horrors ; all occurs in a manner and 
according to laws totally out of relation to the real 
world ; but every now and then there is the gleam 
of some beautiful spot which remains in the mind 
as a vision for ever, the flash of some incident con- 
ceived in the deepest spirit of poetry, the sudden 
quiver of some ethical meaning — many parts, more- 
over, obviously challenging interpretation as involving 
intentionally a half- expressed philosophy, while the 
whole may be taken, in its cohesion, as an Epic Alle- 
gory. It is the kind of book into which a poet may 
go for hints and fancies already made to his hands, 
in dealing with which by way of elaboration and 
expansion he may follow his own free will without 
sense of constraint, evolving meanings where they 
seem concealed, or fitting his own meanings to visual 
imaginations which start out of their apparent arbi- 
trariness into pre-established connexion with them. 



54 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

Accordingly, the body of Arthurian legend here 
locked up has served as a magazine of ideal subjects 
and suggestions to some of the greatest poets of our 
nation, from Spenser and Milton to our own Tenny- 
son. No wonder that to so many in these days 
Malory's King Arthur has become once again a 
favourite pocket volume. To recline in a summer's 
day, for example, under the shelter of a rock on the 
coast of the Isle of Arran, and there with the solitary 
grandeurs of the Isle behind one, and with the sea 
rippling to one's feet and stretching in haze to- 
wards the opposite mainland, to pore over Malory's 
pages till, in the mood of poetic listlessness, the 
mainland over the haze seems again the very region 
where Arthur ruled and the knights journeyed and 
justed, and the romantic island itself an exempt spot 
on the contemporary margin whither the noise of 
them was wafted — this is reading such as is possible 
now but once or twice in a lifetime, and such as was 
known perhaps more when books were scarce. 

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, what 
England possessed of Prose Fiction consisted partly 
of the Arthurian and other romances of chivalry, and 
partly of facetious tales of real life akin to some of 
those in Chaucer. In this century, while the stock of 
national verse received its most important increase 



CHAP-BOOK ROMANCES. 55 

in popular ballads and songs, there was a consi- 
derable increase also in the stock of prose fiction, 
both by home-made stories of English life and by 
translations. In the collection of Early English 
Prose Romances, edited by Mr. Thorns, we have a re- 
print of ten of these old favourites of the English 
fireside — " the Waverley Novels," as he calls them, 
" of the sixteenth century." The first is the 
legend of Robert the Devil, or of the Prince who, 
having been given over to the Devil ere his birth, 
runs a career of cruelties and crimes unparalleled, 
till he is miraculously reclaimed, does penance by 
living among the dogs, and becomes a shining light 
and marries the Emperor's daughter; the next is 
the History of Thomas of Reading, or the Six 
Worthy Yeomen of the West, an English social 
story of the days of Henry the First; next is the 
Story of Friar Bacon, and his great works as a 
magician; then, the story of Friar Rush, or of 
a merry Devil who gets into a monastery in the 
disguise of a servant, and plays all kinds of pranks 
there ; then, a version of the mediaeval legend of the 
poet Virgil, entitled ' ' The Life of Vergilius, and of 
his Death, and the many marvels that he did in his 
life-time, by witchcraft and negromancy, through 
the help of the divells of Hell ; " then, the old tale 



56 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

of Robin Hood, in a brief shape; then, that of 
George- a- Green, the Pinner of Wakefield; then 
" The most pleasant History of Tom-a-Lincoln, that 
renowned soldier, the Red Rose Knight, surnamed 
the Boast of England : shewing his honourable vic- 
tories in foreign countries, with his strange fortunes 
in Faery Land, and how he married the fair An- 
glitera, daughter to Prester John, that renowned 
monarch of the world ; " after that, the History of 
Helyas, Knight of the Swan; and finally, adapted 
from the German, the Life and Death of Dr. 
John Faustus. Of these fictions — circulated as 
chap-books, and some of which have done duty as 
chap-books both in England and Scotland to the 
present day — one or two are recompilations of older 
matter by persons whose names are known, and who 
were contemporaries of Shakespeare. The " History 
of Thomas of Reading," for example, is by a Thomas 
Deloney, a ballad-maker of those days; and " Tom- 
a-Lincoln," as it stands in the collection, is by a 
Richard Johnson, author of another well-known 
compilation, " The Seven Champions of Christen- 
dom." Our " Jack the Giant-Killer," which is as old, 
is clearly the last modern transmutation of the old 
British legend, told in Geoffrey of Monmouth, of 
Corineus the Trojan, the companion of the Trojan 



EARLY TRANSLATIONS OF NOVELS. 57 

Brutus when he first settles in Britain; which Co- 
rineus, being a very strong man and particularly 
good-humoured, is satisfied with being King of 
Cornwall, and killing out the aboriginal giants there, 
leaving to Brutus all the rest of the island, and only 
stipulating that, whenever there is a peculiarly diffi- 
cult giant in any part of Brutus's dominions, he 
shall be sent for to finish the fellow. 

While the stories thus circulating as chap-books, 
or the originals whence they were derived, were not 
disdained by the dramatists as subjects for their 
plots, additional subjects were furnished in abun- 
dance by translations from the Italian, the French, 
the Spanish, the Latin and the Greek, executed by 
persons who made translation their business, or by 
such of the dramatists themselves as could practise 
it occasionally. Among the earliest important trans- 
lations in the department of pure fiction, I note 
these — part of Boccaccio in 1566, followed by Cin- 
tio's Hundred Tales ; the Golden Ass of Apuleius 
in 1571; the iEthiopics of Heliodorus in 1587; 
Mendoza's Lazarillo de Tonnes by David Rowland 
in 1586 ; the Diana of Montemayor in 1598 ; Don 
Quixote, first in 1620; and Rabelais by Urquhart in 
1653. These dates are suggestive. The influence 
of foreign precedents on the forms and the course of 



58 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

our literature has hardly been sufficiently studied. 
The time when, in any particular instance, that in- 
fluence comes into play, is usually marked, I think, 
by the appearance of the first translation of the 
work which acts as the precedent. If so, we should 
gather from the above dates that, while the Novel of 
Adventure and Gallantry, the Pastoral Romance, 
and the Picaresque Novel might have been natu- 
ralized in Britain by the beginning of the seven 
teenth century, and added to the older native 
Romance of Chivalry, the native Fiction of English 
life, and such other native forms of fiction as are 
represented in the chap-books, certain other types of 
fiction already known abroad — the Rabelaisian type 
and the Quixotic type — were still in reserve to be 
naturalized at a later day. 

In the sixteenth century, however, England had 
already produced a form of scholarly prose fiction 
for which there had been no exact foreign prece- 
dent. This was the Political Allegory, represented 
in Sir Thomas Morels Utopia. The original Latin 
edition of this celebrated work appeared in 1516, 
when the author was thirty-six years of age ; and 
the English translation by Ralph Robinson was 
published in 1551. In this Romance — under the 
guise of a description of the imaginary island of 






MORES UTOPIA, <bc. 59 

Utopia, given in conversation by one Raphael 
Hythoday, a seafaring man, " well stricken in age, 
with a black, sun-bnrnt face, a long beard," &c, 
to whom More is supposed to be introduced in the 
city of Antwerp by his friend Peter iEgidius, or 
Peter Giles — we have a philosophic exposition of 
Morels own views respecting the constitution and 
economy of a state, and of his opinions on edu- 
cation, marriage, the military system, and the like. 
Such a style of fiction, once introduced, and re- 
quiring only as much or as little of genuine poetic 
fancy as an author might choose to throw into it, 
was likely to be kept up. Accordingly we have 
later examples of it, also originally in Latin, in 
Bacon's Atlantis ; in an odd production of Bishop 
Hall, in his early life, entitled Mundus Alter et 
Idem, in which (with perhaps more of Rabelaisian 
satire than of political allegory in the design) we 
have verbal descriptions, and even maps, of the 
countries of Crapulia or Feeding-Land, Viraginia 
or Virago-Land, and other such regions ; and 
in the Argenis of John Barclay. This last work, 
however, can be claimed for British literature only 
in an indirect manner. The author, the son of 
a Scotchman who had emigrated to France in the 
reign of James VI. and become a distinguished 



60 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

Professor of Law in a French University, was a 
Frenchman by birth, a Catholic by religion, and the 
son of a French mother. He came over to England 
when young, lived in London, wrote various works, 
as his father had done, expounding a moderate 
Catholicism in opposition to the Jesuits, but at 
length retired to Rome, and there died in peace 
with the Papacy. His Argenis, written at Rome, 
was published in 1621, immediately after his death. 
It is an allegoric romance, in which the island of 
Sicily stands for France, and the recent civil wars of 
that country and its foreign relations during them 
are philosophically represented — Henry IY. figuring 
as Poliarchus, Calvin as Usinulca, the Huguenots 
as Hyperaphanii, fee. Apart from the allegoric 
undersense, however, the romance is praised as a 
really interesting story, rich in incidents and full 
of surprises, and yet skilfully conducted ; while the 
Latin, according to Coleridge, is "equal to that 
of Tacitus in energy and genuine conciseness, and 
is as perspicuous as that of Livy." Coleridge 
wishes, but thinks the wish almost profane, that 
the work could have made its exit from this beautiful 
prose Latin and been moulded into a heroic poem 
in English octave stanza or epic blank verse. In- 
stead of being known only to a few, it would 



SIDNEY'S ARCADIA. 61 

then, he thinks, have been in our popular list of 
classics. 

Before any of these Latin allegories, except More's 
Utopia, had been published, the English language 
had received not only its first sustained and scholarly 
prose-fiction, but also one of the earliest specimens 
of its capacity for refined and artistic prose of any 
kind, in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. It was a 
posthumous publication. After a life of only two 
and thirty years, one of the most heroic and accom- 
plished spirits of a heroic and accomplished age — 
a man whom England accounted "the rose and 
expectancy " of her fair state, and whom England's 
queen called lovingly " her Philip " — had perished 
by a chance wound received in a skirmish in the 
Netherlands (1586). All that he had left, besides 
the recollection of his qualities, consisted of some 
writings penned before his thirtieth year — a few 
Poems, an Essay in Defence of Poesy, and a Prose 
Romance of considerable length, but still incomplete. 
These were published after his death — the romance 
in 1593, under the care of his sister, the Countess 
of Pembroke, and with the title of " The Countess 
of Pembroke's Arcadia/' as having been written for 
her amusement. It is pleasant to think that, though 
these were but casual emanations from Sidney's 



62 HISTORY OF THE NO VEL. 

mind, and not intended by himself as full revelations 
of it, they show that the contemporary opinion of 
him was not a delusion. The Poems, beside Spen- 
ser's and others, will not go for much ; but they have 
something of the poetic essence in them. The 
" Defence of Poesy" is one of the deepest and 
nicest little Essays on Poetry known to me. Of the 
Arcadia I will give a brief account. 

The Arcadia is "a piece of prose-poetrie," says 
the writer of a Life of Sidney prefixed to one of 
the early editions of the work ; " for, though it 
observeth not numbers and rhyme, yet the invention 
is wholly spun out of the phansie, but conformable 
to the possibilitie of truth in all particulars." This 
is a just description. The work is called a Pastoral 
Romance, but it would be better entitled a Romance 
Pastoral and Heroic. In the opening, we see two 
shepherds, Strephon and Claius, on the seashore of 
a Greek island, talking, with magnanimous mutual 
esteem, of their common love for the beautiful 
shepherdess Urania, when, lo! cast on the beach 
near them by the waves, they descry the half-lifeless 
body of a young man. This is Musidorus, who, 
escaping with his friend Pirocles from a burning 
ship in which they were embarked, has managed to 
swim ashore by the help of a wooden coffer. At 



SIDNETS ARCADIA. 63 

his earnest entreaties, the shepherds carry him back 
in a fisherman's boat to the place of the wreck, to 
look for Pirocles. They see Pirocles clinging to 
the mast amid the rich spoils that are floating 
abont ; but, before they can reach him, a pirate's 
galley is on the spot/ and Pirocles and the spoils 
are taken on board together. Disconsolate at the 
loss of his friend, Musidorus returns ashore with 
the shepherds, who, after consulting with him, 
propose to carry him to the house of a certain 
Kalander, a bounteous and hospitable gentleman in 
Arcadia, by whose help, they say, if by that of any 
one, Pirocles is likely to be recovered. They set out 
on their journey to Arcadia, passing through Laconia 
on their way. 

" The third day, in the time that the morning did strew 
roses and violets in the heavenly floor against the coming 
of the sun, the nightingales (striving one with the other 
which could in most dainty variety recount their wrong-caused 
sorrow) made them put off their sleep ; and, rising from under 
a tree, which that night had been their pavilion, they went on 
their journey, which by and bye welcomed Musidorus's eyes, 
wearied with the wasted soil of Laconia, with delightful pro- 
spect. There were hills which garnished their proud heights 
with stately trees ; humble valleys whose base estate seemed 
comforted with the refreshing of silver rivers ; meadows 
enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers ; thickets 
which_, being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed 
so too by the cheerful disposition of many well-tuned birds ; 



64 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

each pasture stored with sheep feeding with sober security, 
while the pretty lambs with bleating oratory craved the 
dam's comfort ; here a shepherd-boy piping as if he should 
never be old ; there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal 
singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to 
work, and her hands kept time to her voice-musick. As for 
the houses of the country (for many houses came under their 
eye), they were all scattered, no two being one by the other, 
and yet not so far off as that it barred mutual succour — a 
show, as it were, of an accompanable solitariness, and of a 
civil wildness. 

u { I pray you/ said Musidorus, then first unsealing his long 
silent lips, ' what countries be these we pass through, which 
are so diverse in show — the one wanting no store ; the other 
having no store but of want ? ' 

"'The country, 5 answered Claius, 'where you were cast 
ashore, and now are passed through, is Laconia ; not so poor by 
the barrenness of the soil, though in itself not passing fertile, 
as by a civil war, which being these two years within the 
bowels of that estate between the gentlemen and the peasants 
(by them named Helots), hath in this sort as it were dis- 
figured the face of nature, and made it so unhospitable as now 
you have found it — the towns neither of the one side nor the 
other willingly opening their gates to strangers, nor strangers 
willingly entering, for fear of being mistaken. But this 
country, where now you set your foot, is Arcadia ; and even 
hard by is the house of Kalander, whither we lead you. The 
country being thus decked with peace, and the child of peace, 
good husbandry, these houses that you see so scattered are 
of men as we are, that live by the commodity of their 
sheep, and therefore in the division of the Arcadian estate are 
termed shepherds — a happy people, wanting little because 
they desire not much.' " 

Arrived at Kalander' s house, and received there 

under the assumed name of Palladius, Musidorus 



SIDNEY'S ARCADIA. 65 

becomes acquainted with, many Arcadians. Thence 
the story expands itself — not confined to Arcadia, 
but ranging over other parts of Greece; not in- 
volving only shepherds and shepherdesses as the 
characters, or concerning itself only with pastoral 
loves and the other incidents of a shepherd's life, 
but bringing in kings and queens, mingling itself 
with the war between the Lacedaemonians and the 
Helots, and leading to combats in armour, new 
friendships and jealousies, many adventures and 
surprises, lovers' songs and soliloquies, and extremely 
high-flown conversations. 

It would be mere pretence to say that the romance 
could be read through now by any one not absolutely 
Sidney-smitten in his tastes, or that, compared with 
the books which we do read through, it is not in- 
tolerably languid. It is even deficient in those 
passages of clear incisive thought which we find in 
the author's Essay on Poetry. No competent person, 
however, can read any considerable portion of it 
without finding it full of fine enthusiasm and 
courtesy, of high sentiment, of the breath of a 
gentle and heroic spirit. There are sweet descrip- 
tions in it, pictures of ideal love and friendship, dia- 
logues of stately moral rhetoric. In the style there 
is a finish, an attention to artifice, a musical arrange- 

F 



QQ HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

ment of cadence, and occasionally a richness of 
phrase, for which English Prose at that time might 
well have been grateful. Seeing, too, that the com- 
plaints of wearisomeness which we bring against the 
book now, were not so likely to be made at the time 
of its publication, when readers had not been taught 
impatience by a surfeit of works of the same class — 
seeing, in fact, that the book was so popular as to go 
through ten editions in the course of fifty years — 
I am disposed to believe that this last merit was not 
the least important. Perhaps, however, some share 
in breaking up the uncouthness of the Elizabethan 
prose, and showing its capabilities in the elegant and 
graceful, ought to be attributed to some of the desul- 
tory prose fictions of Greene and of others of the 
pre- Shakespearian dramatists, and especially to Lyly's 
Euphues (1597). This composition may be considered 
as a romance, inasmuch as it consists of conversa- 
tions and epistles strung on a thread of fictitious 
narrative. The " Euphuism " of Lyly has been 
parodied by Shakespeare and by Scott; and there is 
no doubt that, as an affectation of the Elizabethan 
age, it was a fair subject for ridicule. I believe, 
however, that the " Euphuism " of Lyly was but 
the exaggeration of a quest after an increase of dig- 
nity and artifice in prose style which we find in all 



SIDNEY'S ARCADIA. 67 

the writers of the age, Sidney and Shakespeare 
included ; and that the Euphuistic passion for florid 
phrases and quaint antitheses did our prose some 
good. 

But the most memorable characteristic of the 
Arcadia is its ideality. It is significant of this, that, 
till the Restoration, the Arcadia of Sidney and the 
poetry of Spenser were always mentioned together as 
kindred productions of English genius. The associa- 
tion (allowing for the great superiority in degree 
which is to be accorded to Spenser) is a singularly 
proper one. The two men, the one in prose and 
the other in verse, adopted the same poetic form, 
and were ruled by the same poetic instincts. 
Spenser's earlier poetry had been of the pastoral 
kind — descriptions of ideal scenes of Arcadian life, 
and dialogues of ideal and representative shepherds. 
Whether this Pastoral form of poetry was of Portu- 
guese or of Italian origin, or whether it was only 
a reproduction of the ancient Idyl, Spenser made it 
thoroughly English. In his later poetry, and most 
splendidly in his " Faery Queene," he passed from 
the Pastoral into the Heroic Romance — throwing his 
ideal Arcadia back into the enchanted and chivalrous 
eld, covering it with thicker forests, planting it with 
castles, and peopling it with knights and ladies, 
f2 



68 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

satyrs and nymphs, necromancers and shapes of 
ghastliness. With Spenser for his contemporary, 
Sidney — who, as an Italian and Spanish scholar, 
had become acquainted with the foreign Pastoral for 
himself, had read the "Arcadia" of Sannazaro, and 
had translated lyrics from the " Diana " of Monte- 
mayor — schemed a pastoral romance in English prose. 
It was part of his scheme, however, not to make it 
a pastoral romance merely, but to interfuse with the 
pastoral the higher matter of the heroic. Thus, 
except that he abandoned giants and enchantments, 
and kept his incidents within the poetic possibilities 
of truth, his Arcadia was a combination of some of 
the elements of the " Faery Queene" with something 
of the Spenserian Pastoral. He perfectly knew 
what he was doing. Our wretched modern criticism, 
not content with pointing out the want of human 
interest which must always characterise the Pastoral 
as compared with other forms of poetry, has pre- 
vented us from doing justice to it as an extinct form, 
by filling our minds with an absurd misconception 
of it. The Pastoral, in the hands of such poets as 
Spenser, was never meant to be a representation of 
the real life of shepherds, their real feelings, or their 
real language ; it was but the voluntary and avowed 
transference of the poet himself into a kind of exis- 



SIDNEYS ARCADIA. 69 

tence which, as being one of few and elementary 
conditions, was therefore the best suited for certain 
varieties of that exercise of pure phantasy in which 
the poet delights. The shepherds were not shep- 
herds, were never meant to be shepherds ; they were 
imaginary beings whom it was convenient, because 
of their ideal nature, to remove away out of the midst 
of actual life into an ideal Arcadia. And so when 
the heroic was blended with the Arcadian, Sidney, 
as a prose poet, acted deliberately in rejecting the 
historical, and representing men as they never were ; 
and he would have smiled with contempt at the 
modern criticism that would have objected to him 
the vagueness of his Arcadia as to time and place, 
the unreality of his shepherds, and the ideal perfec- 
tion of his heroes. For some sixty or seventy years, 
Sidney's Arcadia co-operated with Spenser's poetry 
in maintaining a high tone of ideality in English 
literature. 

Something of this ideality — or, to give it a nega- 
tive name, this want of direct human interest — is 
to be found in the next work of reputed consequence 
in the history of English Prose Fiction, the Par- 
thenissa of Roger Boyle, an elder brother of Robert 
Boyle, and known, during the Protectorate, as Lord 
Broghill, and, after the Restoration, as the Earl of 



70 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

Orrery. Parthenissa, which was not his only literary 
attempt, was published, in six parts, shortly after 
the Restoration, and was collected into one large 
folio volume in 1676. It is a romance after a new 
fashion, which had come into being in France, and 
perhaps in other parts of Europe, later than the 
Pastoral and the Romance of Chivalry. Although 
still ideal in its nature, it was ideal after a much 
more artificial style than the older Heroic or Pas- 
toral. Its peculiarity consisted in this, that the 
scene was laid in the ancient world, and that the 
characters were actual or supposed personages of 
classical or ancient history, but were made to speak 
and act like high-flown gentlemen and ladies of the 
seventeenth century. This style of Classic-Heroic 
fiction, in which modern ideas of courage, courtesy, 
fidelity in love, and universal human perfection, 
were embodied in stories of ancient Greeks and 
Romans, Egyptians and Babylonians, Phrygians and 
Persians, had obtained immense popularity in France, 
in consequence chiefly of the achievements in it 
of three nearly contemporary writers — Gomberville, 
Calprenede, and Mademoiselle de Scuderi. " Gom- 
berville," says Mr. Hallam, "led the way in his 
Polexandre, first published in 1632, and reaching, 
in later editions, to about 6,000 pages." Calpre- 



BOYLE'S PARTHENISSA, &c. 71 

nede's Cassandra appeared in 1642, and his Cleo- 
patra was completed in 1646 — both enormously 
prolix. Mademoiselle de Scuderi, after beginning in 
her Ibrahim in 1635, wrote her Grand Cyrus and her 
Clelie, each in ten volumes. As this form of fiction 
was of French origin, so it seemed to suit the French 
taste better than that of any other nation. While 
it was yet popular in France, however, the Earl of 
Orrery seems to have made an attempt, in his Par- 
thenissa, to naturalize it among his countrymen. 
" The sun was already so far declined/' thus the 
romance opens, " that his heat was not oppressive, 
" when a stranger, richly attired and proportionately 
" blessed with all the gifts of nature and education, 
" alighted at the temple of Hierapolis in Syria, where 
" the Queen of Love had settled an Oracle as famous 
" as the Deity to whom it was consecrated." You 
must not suppose that I have gone many pages into 
the Romance beyond this introductory sentence ; but, 
turning over the leaves of the large folio, and swoop- 
ing down on the text here and there, I perceived 
that there were Romans, Carthaginians, Armenians, 
and Parthians in it, and that, besides Artabanes the 
Parthian, who is the gentleman that alighted at the 
temple, and Parthenissa, the daughter of a Parthian 
general, with whom that gentleman appeared to be 



72 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

in love, the story, somehow or other, brought in 
Hannibal, Massinissa, Mithridates, Spartacus, and 
other persons equally well known in the vicinity of 
the ancient Mediterranean. How they came into 
the story, or what the story is, I cannot tell you; 
nor will any mortal know, any more than I do, 
between this and doomsday ; but there they all are, 
lively though invisible, like carp in a pond. 

Nothing as yet in British prose fiction, save, per- 
haps, old Malory's compilation of the Mort d' Arthur, 
and the rough, strongly-seasoned chap-books, that 
could seize the national heart, as distinct from 
the fancies of the educated, or imprint itself last- 
ingly on the national memory ! But such a work 
was coming ! While Boyle's Parthenissa was finding 
its leisurely readers, there was living in Bedford Jail, 
where he had been confined, with brief intervals, 
ever since the Restoration, a tall, strong-boned, 
ruddy-faced, reddish-haired man, already known to 
the Justices of that district as John Bunyan, an 
obstinate Baptist preacher. He was comparatively 
illiterate; the Bible and Foxe's Martyrs were the 
books he chiefly read — on his preserved copy of the 
last of which may be still seen marginal comments 
in his hand in ill-spelt doggrel ; and he had pro- 
bably never read a romance in his life, except, in his 



BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. 73 

unregenerate days, the old chap-book of Bevis of 
Southampton. But he was a man of natural genius, 
with a wit none of the weakest, and an imagination 
about the most fervid in England ; and in the events 
of his previous life — his boyhood and youth among 
English villagers, his campaign as a soldier in the 
Parliamentary army, and, above all, his inward ex- 
perience and his mental agonies and aberrations 
until he had settled in the peace of his Christian 
belief— -he had had an education very thorough in its 
kind, if not quite the same as was given at Cam- 
bridge or Oxford. In Bedford Jail he occupied 
himself in preaching to the prisoners ; and, to while 
away what remained of his time, he thought of writ- 
ing a book. What the intended book was, he does 
not say j for, before he had gone far in it, he had 
fallen upon another : — 

" And thus it was : I, writing of the way 
And race of saints in this our gospel day, 
Fell suddenly into an Allegory 
About their journey and the way to glory, 
In more than twenty things which I set down. 
This done, I twenty more had in my crown ; 
And they began again to multiply, 
Like sparks that from the coals of fire do fly. 

' Nay, then/ thought I, ' if that you breed so fast, 

' I'll put you by yourselves, lest you at last 

' Should prove ad infinitum, and eat out 

' The book that I already am about. ' " 



74 ' HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

And so, out of that old notion of the Christian life 
as a pilgrimage, which had existed in hundreds of 
minds before till it had become a commonplace, there 
grew and grew in Bunyan's mind the whole visual 
allegory of his book — from the Wicket-gate seen afar 
over the fields under the Shining Light, on, by the 
straight undeviating road itself, with all its sights and 
perils, and through the Enchanted Ground and the 
pleasant land of Beulah, to the black and bridgeless 
river by whose waters is the passage to the glim- 
mering realms, and the brightness of the Heavenly 
City. 

It was after Bunyan's release from prison in 1672, 
and when he was over forty-four years of age, that 
the book was finished ; and, when he consulted his 
friends as to printing it, there were great differences 
of opinion. 

" Some said, 'John, print it ;' others said, 'Not so !' 
Some said it might do good ; others said f No. ' " 

Those who objected did so on the ground that Fic- 
tion was an unlawful method of inculcating truth, 
a method already prostituted to the service of pleasure 
and the Devil. This matter Bunyan discussed for 
himself. Was not God's own Book, nay His moral 
government as shown in the history of the Hebrews, 



BVNYANS PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. 75 

full of types, foreshadows, and metaphors ; had not 
Christ and his Apostles spoken in parables ; and was 
it not found that eminent men of recent times, men 
" as high as trees" intellectually, had delivered their 
doctrines by way of allegory and imagined dialogue ? 
If these last had abused the truth, the curse was on 
them, and not on their method ! And so, with his 
strong sense, he came to the right conclusion. Nay, 
he knew that his book would last ! 

" Wouldest thou remember, 
From New Year's day to the last of December 1 
Then read my fancies. They will stick like burs ; 
And may be, to the helpless, comforters." 

The immediate popularity of the book in England, 
Scotland, and the Puritan colonies of America, showed 
that Bunyan had not miscalculated its power. By the 
year 1685, there were ten editions of it — coarsely 
printed, it is true, and on coarse paper ; for the poor 
and the rude discovered its merits long before it was 
customary to speak of it as a feat of literary genius. 
Such of Bunyan's more critical contemporaries as 
did read it would not believe that the untaught 
Baptist preacher was its real author ; and he had to 
write the second part of the Allegory, and his other 
Allegory of the Holy War, to convince them. 

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and his Holy War 



76 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

are the last English works of prose fiction in which, 
for many a day, we find high poetic ideality. It is, 
indeed, an alleged fact in our literary history that, 
from the date of the Restoration onwards till near 
the close of the eighteenth century, this quality, and 
certain other qualities associated with it, had for- 
saken the aggregate mind of England. In such men 
as Milton and Bunyan, sons as they were of the prior 
period of Puritan supremacy, the quality survived for 
a time, and that in an inordinate degree ; but, when 
these men died out, the nation seemed to enter on a 
long period of very different intellectual manifesta- 
tion — an age of wit and animal recklessness and keen 
physical research, an age of Whiggism and Toryism, 
in which one had done with " the sublimities," and 
winked when they were talked of. It was as if, 
to use a phrenological figure, the national brain of 
Britain had then suffered a sudden contraction in 
the frontal organs of ideality, wonder, and compari- 
son, and in the related coronal region, and, retaining 
perhaps the same force and mass on the whole, had 
balanced the deficiency by a corresponding expan- 
sion of the occiput, and an increased prominence in 
such special anterior organs as wit, number, and 
weight, and perhaps also causality. Henceforward, at 
all events, high ideality — with an exception here and 



MRS. APHRA BEHN. 77 

there — takes leave of British literature. In the de- 
partment of Poetry, it is the age of declamatory 
maxim and sentiment, of fine metrical wit and criti- 
cism, of a quick fancy in the conventional and arti- 
ficial. Above all, it was the age of the Comic Drama. 
The name of Dryden, the first and greatest laureate 
of the period, and its living link with the period that 
had passed, suggests at once the prosaic strength that 
was being gained, and the subtle and soaring pecu- 
liarities that were being lost. 

In the Narrative Prose Fiction of the time we should 
expect to find those characteristics (and what they 
are is well known) which Dryden and others im- 
parted to its Dramatic Poetry. And, to the extent 
to which narrative prose fiction was practised, such 
was actually the case. Mrs. Aphra Behn, who died 
in 1689, after having written many plays, some 
poems, and a few short novels, is remembered as a 
kind of female Wycherley. " As love is the most 
" noble and divine passion of the soul," writes the 
warm-blooded little creature in the opening of one of 
her novels, called The Fair Jilt ; or, the Amours of 
Prince Tarquin and Miranda, " so it is that to which 
" we may justly attribute all the real satisfactions of 
" life ; and, without it, man is unfinished and un- 
" happy." It is the text of all her tales, but with 



78 HISTORY OF THE NOVEL. 

the swiftest possible interpretation. The tales may 
have been read by Charles II., Dryden, Rochester, 
Etherege, and other wits of the day, to all of whom 
the fair Aphra was personally known ; and they 
were certainly more read in polite circles than 
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. But Aphra's place in 
the literature of her day was a slight one ; and the fact 
that she alone is now usually named as representing 
the Novel of the Restoration shows how little of the 
real talent of the time took that particular direction. 
It was not till considerably later, when the passion 
for the Comic Drama had somewhat abated, and 
when, by the coming in of Dutch William, the moral 
atmosphere at the centre of the nation had been 
a little cleared, that the Prose Fiction shot up into 
vigour and importance. This it did in Swift and 
Defoe. 



79 



LECTURE II. 

BRITISH NOVELISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

The modern British Prose Fiction, as distinct from 
such earlier works as came under our notice in the 
last lecture, may be considered to have begun in 
Swift and Defoe. 

It was in 1704, the second year of the reign of 
Queen Anne, that Swift, then in his thirty-eighth 
year, and known as a strange, black-browed Irish 
parson, who had come over to try to connect himself 
with the Whigs, and so open for himself a career out 
of Ireland, published his Battle of the Books and 
his Tale of a Tub. The publications were anony- 
mous, but were traced to their author; and, from 
that time forward, through the whole of the reign of 
Queen Anne, the whole of that of George I., and 
part of that of George II., Swift — alternating between 
London and Ireland, and, latterly, no longer a Whig, 



80 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

but a dictator among the Tory politicians, who had 
raised him to the Deanery of St, Patrick's, Dublin, 
but did not dare to make him a bishop — continued 
to pour forth controversial and other tracts in verse 
and in prose, and to be regarded, even with such 
men as Pope and Addison among his contemporaries, 
as "the greatest genius of the age." Among his 
slighter tracts were several in the same vein of satiric 
fiction as the two early productions that have been 
named ; but his only other work of any considerable 
length in that vein, was his Gulliver's Travels, pub- 
lished in 1727, when he was in his sixty-first year. 
By that time, Defoe, occupying a much humbler 
position among his contemporaries than belonged to 
the imperious Dean of St. Patrick's, was also known 
as a writer of prose fiction. 

An eager Whig and Dissenter, the son of a London 
butcher, and six years older than Swift, Defoe had 
begun his career as a writer of political pamphlets as 
early as the reign of Charles II. ; for about thirty- 
seven years he had gone on writing such pamphlets 
on the questions and occurrences of the time, some- 
times getting thanks for them, or even a commis- 
sioner ship or other post from the Whigs, but more 
frequently getting nothing but persecution, or com- 
ing within the clutches of the law for libel ; and, if 



SWIFT AXD DEFOE. 81 

we except his True Relation of the Apparition of one 
Mrs. Veal, which he wrote for a publisher, to be pre- 
fixed to " Drelincourt on Death/' and carry off that 
otherwise nnvendible work, it was not till near the 
close of his life, when other means of livelihood, com- 
mercial and literary, had failed him, that he betook 
himself to fictitious story-writing. His Robinson Crusoe 
appeared in 1719, when he was in his fifty-ninth year ; 
and, during the twelve remaining years of his life, 
he published, in rapid succession, his Adventures of 
Captain Singleton, his Duncan Campbell, his Fortunes 
of Moll Flanders, his History of Colonel Jack, his 
Journal of the Plague, his Memoirs of a Cavalier, his 
Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress, &c. Besides 
these, there were some twenty other publications 
of different kinds from his busy pen during the same 
twelve years. Altogether, the list of Defoe's known 
writings includes 210 books or pamphlets ; but pos- 
terity has agreed to forget most of these, and to 
remember chiefly some of his works of prose fiction. 
At the close of my last lecture, I called attention 
to the fact that, from the Restoration of 1660 (per- 
haps, to clear myself from such exceptions as I then 
indicated, I should have been more safe in saying, 
from the Revolution of 1688), British society, and, 
with it, British intellectual activity, is seen passing 

G 



82 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

into an era of strikingly new conditions. According 
to the common feeling, I said, Britain then passed 
into a period in which, to all appearance, it had 
" done with the sublimities." Do we not recognize 
this every day in our common historical talk ? Is it 
not one of our commonplaces that "the Eighteenth 
Century " — and " the Eighteenth Century " must, in 
this calculation, be reckoned from about the year 
1688, the year of our English Revolution, to about 
1789, the year of the Erench Revolution — was, both 
in Britain, and over the rest of the civilized world, 
a century bereft of certain high qualities of heroism, 
poetry, faith, or whatever else we may choose 
to call it, which we do discern in the mind of 
previous periods, and distinguished chiefly by a 
critical and mocking spirit in literature, a superficial 
and wide-ranging levity in speculation, and a perse- 
verance reaching to greatness only in certain tracks 
of art and of physical science ? Do we not observe 
that it is in this century that there arises and is 
established, as the paramount influence in British 
thought and British action, that distinction of Whig- 
gism and Toryism by which we still find ourselves 
polarized into two factions, and which, however 
necessary it may have been, and whatever may have 
been its services in the past, is certainly so far from 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CENTURY. 83 

being the most profound distinction possible to the 
human reason, or even visible in human history, that 
there is not nowadays any noble or really powerful 
soul in these islands but, in his inner heart, spurns 
it, despises it, and throws it off ? Do we not observe, 
further, that our historical writers divide themselves, 
as by the operation of a constitutional difference, 
into two sects or schools— the one seeking its subjects 
in the older ages of British History, back in the 
Puritan, or in the Tudor, or even in the feudal and 
Norman times, as if there were little of the highest 
order of interest in the period which has elapsed 
since the Revolution ; the other, with Lord Macaulay 
at their head, actually commencing their researches 
and their studies from the time when the modern 
distinction of Whiggism and Toryism makes its 
appearance, as if all before that were but chaos and 
barbarism, and only then our nation ceased to keep 
reckoning savagely by the stars, and began to voyage 
regularly by the loadstone ? 

Here, as in most other such cases, a deeper study 
of the facts might, I believe, provide a reconcilia- 
tion. Whether this systematic depreciation of the 
Eighteenth Century is just, is a question involving 
perhaps larger speculative considerations than have 
yet been brought into it. If it is supposed that those 

g2 



84 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

changes of moods which we observe in nations and 
even in Humanity in the aggregate, as well as in 
individuals, are caused by additions and subductions 
of the general vital energy with which Humanity is 
charged; if it is supposed that now somehow, as if 
out of celestial extra-planetary space, there is shot 
into the general nerve of the race an accession of 
force, raising its tone and its intensity, and that 
again this accession may be withdrawn, leaving the 
race comparatively languid ; then the undervaluing 
of one age as compared with another in our historical 
retrospections is not unscientific. It is but as saying 
of an individual man that, at one time, what with the 
excitement of some great emergency, he is splendid 
and transcends himself, and that, at another, what 
with the absence of stimulating occasion or with 
temporary ill health (caused, it may be, by obvious 
physical or atmospheric influences), he sinks beneath 
his usual level. As, in the case of an individual, 
a temporary malevolence of atmospheric conditions, 
or of other conditions of nature out of himself, may 
depress his mental energy and actually lessen the 
worth of all that he thinks and says while the adverse 
conjunction lasts, so may there not be cosmical 
conditions, conditions of total nature outside of Hu- 
manity, tremors telluric and even blasts sidereal 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CENTURY. 85 

along the earth's orbit, or along the mightier path 
in which our whole system is voyaging, of a kind 
sometimes to cause epidemics which sweep through 
the life of the globe, and seem like admonitions that 
the globe itself might be replunged into the fell pre- 
Adamite state whence it emerged to support man, 
and, at other times, without any such glaring stroke 
of decimation and death, to lead with equal certainty 
to weaknesses and untoward intellectual variations ? 
On the other hand, if we adopt the more general 
notions of Progress, which do not suppose any such 
givings and takings as going on between Humanity 
and the rest of the universe known or unknown, but 
suppose a definite amount of energy or of possibility 
locked up once for all beyond escape in the actual 
organism of Humanity, and subject only to evolution, 
then, as all times are successively parts of the self- 
contained evolution, none is to be depreciated, and 
those nearest to ourselves least of all. 

I am not going to discuss these alternatives — 
either, on the one hand, to add my voice to the po- 
pular and now commonplace outcry against the poor 
Eighteenth Century; or, on the other, to fight its 
battle. This only seems, for the present, pertinent 
to my subject, — that, agreeably to the views we took 
in the former lecture, as to the relative capabilities 



86 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

of Prose and Verse, we should expect to find that, 
to the extent to which we do allow some such change 
to have taken place in British thought and British 
society as that which some would call offhand a 
degeneracy, to the same extent Prose would assert 
its sway in those regions of authorship which are 
more peculiarly its own. If the peculiar regions of 
Prose — not those into which it may penetrate, or 
into which, perhaps, it will yet penetrate, but those 
which were first assigned over to it, and where its 
rule is least disputed — are the regions of the comic, 
and the historically complex, the didactic, and the 
immediately practical, while Verse retains a certain 
superior, though not exclusive, mastery in the realms 
of the sublime, the elemental or ideal, and the highly 
impassioned ; then British society, when it lost, if it 
did lose, those peculiarities of sustained ideality of 
conception, of faith in things metaphysical, and of 
resoluteness in impassioned aims, which had formerly 
borne it up to the poetic pitch, and fell into a com-" 
parative flat of complicated and bustling activity, 
with Whiggism and Toryism regulating the currents, 
did at least, by that very change, present a state of 
things favourable to the increase of Prose Literature 
as regards relative quantity, and also to the use of 
new and special prose forms. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CENTURY. 87 

Do not the facts correspond with the expectation? 
In the eighteenth century, as we have denned its du- 
ration, the chief poets or writers of verse in Britain 
are, after Dryden, who links it with the time fore- 
going, — Pope, Prior, Gay, Addison, Southerne, Rowe, 
Hughes, Allan Ramsay, Young, Thomson, Dyer, 
Shenstone, Gray, Co lins, Akenside, Johnson, Gold- 
smith, Churchill, Chatterton, Blair, Home, Beattie, 
the two Wartons, and Darwin ; names suggestive of 
very various excellence, but not, save in one or two 
instances, of excellence either very extraordinary in 
degree or in kind peculiarly poetic. In the list of 
prose-writers for the same period, we have the names 
of — Dryden again, and Locke, and Clarke, and 
Berkeley, and Butler, and Hartley, and Hume, and 
Adam Smith ; of Burnet, and Atterbury, and Tillot- 
son, and South ; of Defoe, and Swift, and Addison 
again, and Steele, and Shaftesbury, and Bolingbroke, 
and several comic dramatists ; of Johnson again, and 
Goldsmith again ; of Richardson, and Fielding, and 
Smollett, and Sterne, and Walpole, and Henry 
Mackenzie ; of Hume again, and Gibbon, and Ro- 
bertson, and Hugh Blair, and the younger Warton ; 
and of others, and still others in different depart- 
ments, not forgetting Junius and Burke. Are we 
not here in the middle of a tide of prose unexampled 



88 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

in any former time? That, in older times, there 
were specimens of prose perhaps higher in some 
respects than any belonging to this era — more ma- 
jestic, more impassioned, more poetical — may be 
admitted, in conformity with what has been said as 
to the ultimate capabilities of Prose, even in compe- 
tition with Verse. But what wealth here, what 
variety, what versatility ! It is clearly an age in 
which Prose was, on the whole, the more congenial, 
and in which the most important and effective work 
of the British mind, as the British mind then under- 
stood its work, devolved on Prose naturally, and was 
shared in by Verse chiefly because Verse had come 
sorely down in the world, had little of its proper 
work left, and undertook anything rather than be 
idle. Does not Gibbon alone outweigh, in real merit, 
half a score of the contemporary versifiers ? And 
Hume or Adam Smith another half-score ; and 
Fielding or Burke another ? With the exception of 
Pope and Thomson, and one or two others of the 
poetic list, has not Prose the evident advantage, even 
in the finer and subtler exercises of mind; and 
are not Addison and Johnson in prose superior to 
their own selves in verse ? In short, accepting, if we 
choose, the opinion that the eighteenth century was 
a prosaic age, may we not subject the opinion, in 



SWIFT AND DEFOE. 89 

accepting it, to a slight etymological twist, so as to 
turn it, to some extent, into a compliment to the 
poor shivering century of which it is intended as a 
vilification ? May we not, when we next hear the 
eighteenth century in Britain spoken of as a prosaic 
century, acquiesce in the phrase, with this interpre- 
tation attached — that it was indeed a prosaic century, 
inasmuch as it produced an unprecedented quantity 
of most excellent and most various Prose ? 

The new British prose fiction which came into 
being near the beginning of the century in the 
works of Swift and Defoe, was one of the most 
notable manifestations of the increasing sufficiencv 
of Prose generally. There had been already in 
Britain the Arthurian prose romance, with its won- 
drous ideality, the grotesque and facetious tales of 
the chap-books, the Utopian or political romance, 
the wearisome Arcadian Romance or Pastoral-Heroic, 
the still more prolix romance of modernized classic 
heroism, the unique romance of Bunyan, and also, to 
some extent, the Novel of French and Italian gal- 
lantry ; but here was a kind of fiction which, what- 
ever it might lack in comparison with its prede- 
cessors, grasped contemporary life with a firmer hold 
at a thousand points simultaneously, and arrested 
more roughly the daily forms of human interest. 



90 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

Swift, in his fictions, as in the rest of his writings, 
is the British satirist of his age. His prototype, in 
as far as he had any, was Rabelais. In Swift first 
the mad, the obscene, the ghastly, the all but infernal 
and yet infinitely sorrowful humour of the French 
satirist of the sixteenth century appears in full mea- 
sure in the literature of Britain. That he was a 
reader of Rabelais cannot be doubted. He adopts 
his style and the whimsicalities of his method so 
openly as almost to court the name of his imitator. 
But it was as a man of original genius, who would 
have gone near to be the Rabelais of his time and 
country, even had no Rabelais been in France before 
him. 

Indubitably one of the most robust minds of his 
age, Swift, in the first place, went wholly along with 
his age, nay, tore it along with him faster than it 
could decorously go, in its renunciation of romance 
and all " the sublimities." He, a surpliced priest 
(as Rabelais had also been) , a commissioned expositor 
of things not seen, was an expositor of things not 
seen ; but it was of those that are unseen because 
they have to be dug for down in the concealing 
earth, and not of those that fill the upward azure, 
and tremble by their very nature beyond the sphere 
of vision. The age for him was still too full of the 



S WIFT A ND DEFOE. 9 1 

cant of older beliefs, preserved in the guise of 
" respectabilities ;" and, to help to clear it of this, 
he would fix its gaze on its own roots, and on the 
physical roots of human nature in general, down in 
the disgusting and the reputedly bestial. I say this 
not in the way of judgment, but of fact. It is 
what we all know of Swift — they who see good in 
his merciless method, as well as they who abhor it. 
But, with all this excess of his age in its own spirit, 
even to what was considered profanity and blas- 
phemy, Swift, in many respects, adjusted himself to 
it. He flung himself, none more energetically, into 
its leading controversy of Whiggism and Toryism. 
He was at first, somewhat anomalously, a Whig in 
civil politics and ecclesiastically a High Churchman, 
consenting to changes in the secular system of the 
State, but zealous for the preservation and extension 
of that apparatus of bishoprics, churches, and endow- 
ments, which the past had consolidated — though for 
what end, save that Swifts, as well as Cranmers and 
Lauds, could work it, he hardly permits us to infer. 
Later, he was a Tory in state-politics as well. In 
both stages of his political career, he took an active 
interest in current social questions. He was as 
laborious as a prime minister in his partisanship, as 
vehement and minute in his animosities. He had 



92 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. • 

some peculiar tenets which he perseveringly incul- 
cated — among which was that now called " The 
Emancipation of Women." 

And yet, though he concerned himself in this 
manner with the controversies and social facts of his 
time, how, underneath such concern, we see a raging 
tumult of thought about humanity as a whole, over 
which all these facts and controversies of his time 
must have really floated as things ludicrous and con- 
temptible ! It is one of the peculiarities of Swift 
that, though belonging to an age in which Whiggism 
and Toryism had come in lieu of older distinctions 
and beliefs, and though himself sharing in the re- 
nunciation of these as effete fanaticism, yet in him, 
more than in any other man of his time, we see a 
mind bursting the bounds of Whiggism and Toryism, 
not dwelling in them, seeing round and round them, 
and familiar in its own recesses with more general 
and more awful contemplations. True, Swift's phi- 
losophy of human nature, in which his partisanship 
was engulphed, was not the same as that of the elder 
men — the Shakespeares and the Miltons, whose souls 
had also tended to the boundless and the general. 
It was a philosophy of misanthropy rather than of 
benevolence, of universal despair rather than of hope, 
of the blackness under the earth, and the demons 



SWIFT AND DEFOE. 93 

tugging there at their connexions with man, rather 
than of the light and evangelism of the countervailing 
Heaven. But herein at least was a source of strength 
which made him terrible among his contemporaries. 
He came among them by day as one whose nights 
were passed in horror ; and hence in all that he said 
and did there was a vein of ferocious irony. 

While all Swift's fictions reveal his characteristic 
satirical humour, they reveal it in different degrees 
and on different themes and occasions. In some of 
his smaller squibs of a fictitious kind we see him as 
the direct satirist of a political faction. In the Battle 
of the Books we have a satire directed partly against 
individuals, partly against a prevailing tone of opinion 
and criticism. In the Tale of a Tub he appears as 
the satirist of the existing Christian Churches, the 
Papal, the Anglican, and the Presbyterian — treating 
each with the irreverence of an absolute sceptic in 
all that Churches rest upon, but arguing in behalf of 
the second. In the four parts of Gulliver he widens 
the ground. In the Voyage to Laputa, &c, we have 
a satire on various classes of men and their occupa- 
tions ; and in the Voyages to Lilliput and Brobding- 
nag, and still more in the story of the Houyn- 
hmns and Yahoos, we have satires on human nature 
and human society, down to their very foundations. 



94 NO VELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

With what power, what genius in ludicrous inven- 
tion, these stories are written, no one needs to be 
reminded. Schoolboys, who read for the story only, 
and know nothing of the satire, read Gulliver with 
delight ; and our literary critics, even while watching 
the allegory and commenting on the philosophy, 
break down in laughter from the sheer grotesqueness 
of some of the fancies, or are awed into pain and 
discomfort by the ghastly significance of others. Of 
Swift we may surely say, that, let our literature last 
for ages, he will be remembered in it, and chiefly for 
his fictions, as one of the greatest and most original 
of our writers — the likest author we have to Rabelais, 
and yet with British differences. In what cases one 
would recommend Swift is a question of large con- 
nexions. To all strong men he is and will be con- 
genial, for they can bear to look round and round 
reality on all sides, even on that which connects us 
with the Yahoos. Universality is best. In our 
literature, however, there are varieties of spirits — 

Black spirits and white, 
Green spirits and grey ; 



And so, 



Mingle, mingle, mingle, 
Ye that mingle may. 



SWIFT AND DEFOE. 95 

If Swift, in his fictions, is the satirist of his age, 
Defoe, in most of his, is its chronicler or newspaper- 
reporter. He had been well beaten about in his 
life, and had been in many occupations — a hosier, a 
tile-maker, a dealer in wool ; he had travelled abroad 
and in Scotland ; and he was probably as familiar 
with the middle and lower strata of London society 
as any man living. He had been in prison and in 
the pillory, and knew the very face of the mob and 
ragamuffinism in its haunts. Hence, although he 
too had been a political pamphleteer, and had 
written with a blunt, straightforward energy, and 
even with a sarcastic irony, in the cause of liberty 
and "Whiggism, yet, when he betook himself to con- 
cocting stories, the sale of which might bring him 
in more money than he could earn as a journalist, 
he was content to make them plain narrations, or 
little more. In the main, as all know, he drew 
upon his knowledge of low English life, framing 
imaginary histories of thieves, courtesans, bucca- 
neers, and the like, of a kind to suit a coarse, 
popular taste. He was a great reader, and a 
tolerable scholar, and he may have taken the hint 
of his method from the Spanish picaresque Novel, as 
Swift adopted his from Rabelais. On the whole, 
however, it was his own robust sense of reality that 



96 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

led him to his style. There is none of the sly 
humour of the foreign picaresque Novel in his 
representations of English ragamuffin life ; there 
is nothing of allegory, poetry, or even of didactic 
purpose ; all is hard, prosaic, and matter-of-fact, as 
in newspaper paragraphs, or the pages of the 
Newgate Calendar. Much of his material, indeed, 
may have been furnished by his recollections of 
occurrences, or by actual reports and registers ; but 
it is evident that no man ever possessed a stronger 
imagination of that kind which, a situation being 
once conceived, teems with circumstances in exact 
keeping with it. When the ghost of Mrs. Veal 
appears to Mrs. Bargrave, at Canterbury, it is in 
" a scoured silk newly made up ; " and when, after 
chatting with Mrs. Bargrave, and recommending to 
her Drelincourt's Book on Death, the ghost takes 
her leave of the worthy woman, who has been quite 
unconscious all the time of the disembodied nature 
of her visitor, it is at Mrs. Bargrave' s door, " in 
the street, in the face of the beast-market, on, 
a Saturday, being market-day at Canterbury, at 
three-quarters after one in the afternoon." This 
minuteness of imagined circumstance and filling 
up, this power of fiction in facsimile of nature, is 
Defoe's unfailing characteristic. Lord Chatham is 



SWIFT AND DEFOE. 97 

said to have taken the History of a Cavalier for a 
true biography; and the Account of the Plague of 
London is still read by many under a similar delu- 
sion. There is no doubt that these, as well as the 
fictions laid more closely in the author's own time, 
are, for the purposes of historical instruction, as 
good as real. It is in the true spirit of a realist, 
also, that Defoe, though he is usually plain and pro- 
saic, yet, when the facts to be reported are striking 
or horrible, rises easily to their level. His description 
of London during the Plague leaves an impression 
of desolation far more death-like and dismal than 
the similar descriptions in Thucydides, Boccaccio, and 
Manzoni. It is a happy accident, too, that the 
subject of one of his fictions, and that the earliest 
on a great scale, was of a kind in treating which his 
genius in matter of fact necessarily produced the 
effect of a poem. The conception of a solitary mari- 
ner thrown on an uninhabited island was one as 
really belonging to the fact of that time as those 
which formed the subject of Defoe's less-read fictions 
of coarse English life. Dampier and the Buccaneers 
were roving the South Seas; and there yet remained 
parts of the land-surface of the earth of which man 
had not taken possession, and on which sailors were 
occasionally thrown adrift by the brutality of cap- 

H 



98 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

tains. Seizing this text, more especially as offered 
in the story of Alexander Selkirk, Defoe's matchless 
power of inventing circumstantial incidents made 
him more a master even of its poetic capabilities 
than the rarest poet then living could have been ; 
and now that, all round our globe, there is not an 
unknown island left, we still reserve in our mental 
charts one such island, with the sea breaking round 
it, and we would part any day with ten of the heroes 
of antiquity rather than with Robinson Crusoe and 
his man Friday. 

Besides Swift and Defoe, there were others of the 
literary cluster of Queen Anne's reign, and of that of 
George I., who might be included among the writers 
of prose fiction. Both Steele and Addison have left 
fine sketches which, though brief, are to be referred 
to this species of literature ; in the Memoirs of Mar- 
tinus Scriblerus by Pope, Arbuthnot, and others, we 
have a literary satire on a thread of fictitious charac- 
ter and incident ; and Arbuthnot's History of John 
Bull is a satiric political fiction of the hour, after the 
manner of Swift. Passing by these, however, and 
also those short novels of licentious incident by Mrs. 
Heywood and other followers of Aphra Behn, which 
are to be found bound up in old volumes, four or 



RICHARDSON. 99 

five together, in the neglected shelves of large libra- 
ries, we alight, in the reign of George II., on a new- 
group of British Novelists, remembered pre-eminently 
under that name. When we speak of the British 
Novelists of the Eighteenth Century, we think of 
Bichardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne, and of 
the others as arranged round them. It is common 
even, in consideration of the great extension which 
the prose form of fiction received at their hands, to 
speak of them as the fathers of the present British 
Novel. 

It was in the year 1740, nine years after Defoe's 
death, and when Swift was lingering on in the world 
as a speechless maniac under the care of his friends, 
that Bichardson — a prosperous London printer, of 
a plump little figure and healthy complexion, who 
had lived to the age of fifty-one without distinguish- 
ing himself in any way, except as an upright and 
careful man of business, and a great favourite in a 
circle of ladies who used to visit at his house for the 
pleasure of hearing him talk — published his Pamela, 
or Virtue Rewarded. He had been asked by two of 
his publishing friends, who knew his talent for letter- 
writing, to write " a little book of familiar letters on 
the useful concerns of common life;" but, on his 
setting himself to comply with the request, it 
H2 



100 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

occurred to him, lie says, that, if he wrote a story in 
an easy and natural manner, "he might possibly 
" introduce a new species of writing that might pos- 
" sibly turn young people into a course of reading 
u . different from the pomp and parade of romance- 
" writing, and, dismissing the improbable and mar- 
<( vellous, with which novels generally abound, might 
" tend to promote the cause of religion and virtue." 
Remembering to have heard many years before of a 
poor girl who, after resisting all the arts and perse- 
cution of a rich young squire, was honourably 
married to him and became an exemplary and accom- 
plished lady, he framed a story, to the same intent, 
of honest Pamela Andrews resisting through ever so 
many pages the machinations of her young master 
for her ruin, till at last, foiled by her irreducible 
virtue, he is compelled to call in the clergyman, and 
she is rewarded by becoming his wife, riding in the 
coach drawn by the Flanders mares, and being intro- 
duced in her blushing beauty to all his great rela- 
tions. The story, though long drawn out, according 
to our present ideas, was an immense advance, in 
point of interest, on the drowsy romance of the 
French classic school, and was read with avidity in 
families ; while Richardson's claim to having invented 
in it a species of writing " enlisting the passions on 



RICHARDSON AND FIELDING. 101 

the side of virtue," was allowed by the unanimous 
voice of the clergy and of the strictest moralists of 
the time. Among the laughing young scapegraces 
of the day, however, the good printer was spoken of 
irreverently as " a solemn prig," and great fun was 
made of Pamela, her virtue, and its reward. 

No one seems to have burst forth with heartier 
indignation against what, in this particular circle of 
readers, was called Richardson's sickly morality, 
than Harry Fielding, whose sisters were among 
Richardson's visitors and admirers. The son of a 
general, the great-grandson of an earl, and with 
many relatives among the aristocracy of the day, 
Fielding, now in his thirty-fourth year, was a tall, 
handsome, altogether magnificent fellow, with a face 
(if we may judge from his portrait by Hogarth) quite 
kingly in its aspect, and yet the very impersona- 
tion of reckless good-humour and abounding animal 
enjoyment. From his twentieth year — with the 
exception of a brief period after his marriage, when 
he lived as a country gentleman, and ran through 
a considerable fortune in horses, hounds, footmen 
in yellow liveries, and all kinds of extravagant 
hospitalities — he had lived loosely and precariously 
by his pen in London ; scribbling off comedies and 
farces, editing Whig periodicals, smiting political 



102 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

men with lampoons, diving into the taverns about 
Fleet Street and presiding there at roystering com- 
panies of actors and wits, and demeaning him- 
self, under the annoyances of perpetual debt and 
perpetual want of money, with that serene indiffer- 
ence which comes of a happy temperament and of 
being the great-grandson of an earl. He was now 
a widower, after his first brief wedded life ; and he 
had entered himself at the bar, with a view to some 
sinecure such as England provides for her nominal 
lawyers. Reading Pamela, this frank and manly 
humorist would not accept it at all ; and by way of 
satire, and at the same time to try his hand in the 
new kind of literature of which it was an example, 
he resolved to make it the subject of a parody. He 
accordingly schemed the Adventures of Joseph An- 
drews — Joseph being a footman and the supposed 
brother of Pamela, who, chiefly by keeping the excel- 
lent pattern of his sister's virtue before his eyes, is 
" enabled to preserve his purity " in the midst of 
similar temptations. Getting to like the story as 
he proceeded with it, Fielding was by no means 
steady to his original notion of producing a parody 
on Eichardson ; and the novel, when published in 
1742, became popular on its own account. 

Encouraged by his success, Fielding published, in 



RICHARDSON AND FIELDING. 103 

the following year (1743), another satiric fiction, of 
deeper, if less pleasing irony, in his History of the 
Life of the late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great, and a 
volume of miscellanies, containing his little-read 
allegory entitled A Journey from this World to the 
next. He then, for several years, reverted to political 
writing and writings for the stage. Richardson also, 
who resented Fielding's jest at his expense, and spoke 
bitterly to Fielding's own sisters of their brother's 
"continued lowness," had published nothing since 
the concluding part of his Pamela. In 1748, how- 
ever, came forth Richardson's masterpiece, Clarissa 
Harloive — twice as long as its predecessor, and written 
in the same form, as a series of letters, and with the 
same purpose of sustained and serious morality, but 
so much more elaborately wrought, and reaching, at 
the close, in the villainy of Lovelace and the irre- 
parable wrongs of Clarissa, to such an agony of tragic 
interest, that the criticism even of Fielding and the 
other sons of humour was hushed in admiration of 
the consummate art. The nervous, tea-drinking, 
pompous little printer, coddled as he was by a bevy 
of admiring women, who nursed his vanity, as 
Johnson thought, by keeping him all to themselves, 
and letting nothing but praise come near him, had 
beaten, for the moment, the stalwart Fielding, rough- 



104 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

ing it never so manfully among companions of the 
other sex, and invigorating his views of things with 
club-dinners and claret. The very next year, how- 
ever (1749), Fielding gave to the world his master- 
piece, in Tom Jones, or the History of a Foundling ; 
and so the balance hung again between the two men, 
or rather between the two styles. 

At this precise moment a third novelist had come 
into the field. This was Tobias Smollett, a young 
Scotchman of seven- and- twenty, who, after seeing 
some service in the navy as a surgeon's mate, had 
settled in London, with his West Indian wife, partly 
in hopes of medical practice, and partly with a view 
to authorship. He had been pestering the managers 
of theatres with a tragedy which he had written in 
Scotland, and had touched and retouched till he was 
tired of it ; he had written two metrical satires ; he 
had contributed to periodicals — all without success, 
when it occurred to him to make an attempt in the 
new kind of fiction which Richardson and Fielding 
were making popular. The result was his Adventures 
of Roderick Random, published in 1748, almost 
simultaneously with Clarissa. At first the book was 
attributed to Fielding ; but it was soon known that 
there was a third Richard in the field. 

In 1751 Smollett produced his Peregrine Pickle, 



RICHARDSON, FIELDING, AND SMOLLETT. 105 

which is twice as long as his first novel, and, in my 
opinion, much superior. In the same year, Fielding, 
who had in the meantime received a small pension 
and the post of a paid police-magistrate, published 
his last novel, Amelia. Richardson followed, in 
1753, with his Sir Charles Grandison, in which, to 
correct the partiality with which, as he had heard, 
his fair readers regarded Lovelace, the villain of his 
previous novel, he depicted his ideal of a Christian 
gentleman, such as ladies ought preferably to admire. 
Smollett, in the same year, added his third novel, 
The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom. At 
this point Fielding dropped out of the triumvirate — 
dying at Lisbon, whither he had gone for the benefit 
of his health, in his forty-eighth year. 

The veteran Richardson and young Dr. Smollett 
were now, in public esteem (though Richardson 
would have disdained the association), the surviving 
representatives of the British novel. Neither seemed 
disposed to add anything, in the way of fiction, to 
what he had already produced — Richardson, content 
with his laurels and occupying himself in writing 
letters from his shy seclusion to his lady-correspon- 
dents; and Smollett betaking himself to historical 
compilations, translations, the editing of reviews, 
and other labours which broke his health and 



106 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

tried his irascible temper. In the interval appeared a 
fourth writer of fiction — the Rev. Laurence Sterne, 
an Irishman by birth, and a Yorkshire clergyman by 
profession, but with a somewhat unclerical, if not a 
cracked reputation. In 1759, when forty-six years 
of age, he published the first two volumes of his 
Tristram Shandy, a work delivered to the public by 
instalments, and not completed, as it stands, till 
1767. Richardson, who had lived to see the debut 
of this new interloper, and to like him as little as the 
others, died in 1761 ; and Smollett and Sterne were 
left together. Smollett's fourth novel, his Sir Laun- 
celot Greaves, published in 1762, did little to main- 
tain his reputation; and to those who judged from 
Smollett's broken health and spirits, it might have 
seemed that Sterne, though the older man, would 
have the last of it. But it was not so. Sterne, 
having completed his Tristram Shandy, and having 
published also six volumes of sermons, was engaged 
in 1768 in the publication of his Sentiment alJ our ney 
(the fruit of a continental tour which he had made 
some years before), when he died in a London inn. 
Smollett, who had been at death's door, but had 
recovered by a two years' stay abroad (his published 
account of which was supposed to have suggested 
Sterne's Journey by way of contrast), lived to write 



RLCHARDSOX, SMOLLETT, AXD STERNE. 107 

two novels more. His Adventures of an Atom, pub- 
lished in 1769, was, indeed, rather a fierce political 
allegory in the style of Swift than a novel ; but in 
1771, when he was a poor dying invalid at Leghorn, 
he flashed out again in the last, and perhaps the 
best, of all his fictions, the Expedition of Humphry 
Clinker. Besides being a novel, it is the record of 
the leal-hearted Scot's last visit to his native land. 
It was written while, as his breath grew fainter under 
the kindly Italian sky, all his intervening years of 
toil and trouble faded from his fancy as a dream, and 
he was again a boy, with life bright before him, 
glorying in Wallace and Bruce, walking in the streets 
of Glasgow, fishing by the banks of the Leven, or 
boating on the breast of Lochlomond. When Smol- 
lett died, he was but fifty years of age. 

Of the four writers of fiction, whose historical 
relations to each other I have thus sketched, the 
priority in time belongs to Richardson. With this 
priority of time there go certain attributes distin- 
guishing him conspicuously from the others. 

We do not read Richardson's novels much now ; 
and it cannot be helped that we do not. There are 
the novels of a hundred years between us and him; 
time is short ; and novels of eight or ten volumes, 
written in the tedious form of letters, and recording 



108 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY* 

conversations and meditations in which the story 
creeps on inch by inch, without so much as an unex- 
pected pistol-shot or a trick of Harlequin and Pan- 
taloon to relieve the attention, have little chance 
against the brisker and broader fictions to which we 
have been accustomed. We have to remember, 
however, not only that, a hundred years ago, Richard- 
son's novels were read everywhere, both in Britain 
and on the continent, with a protracted sense of 
fascination, a leisurely intensity of interest, such as 
no British author of prose stories had ever com- 
manded before, but also that almost every thoughtful 
critic who has read Richardson since has spoken of 
him as, all in all, one of the masters of our litera- 
ture. Johnson would not allow Fielding to be put 
in comparison with Richardson ; and, whenever Lord 
Macaulay names Richardson, it is as a kind of prose 
Shakespeare. 

When we read Richardson for ourselves, we can 
see the reasons which have led to so high an opinion. 
His style of prose fiction is perhaps more original 
than that of any other novelist we have had. I have 
alluded already to the influence of foreign precedent 
on the course of our fictitious literature. There was 
foreign precedent for Sidney's "Arcadia" in Italian 
and Spanish pastoral romances ; for Boyle's " Parth- 



RICHARDSON. 109 

enissa" in the French classical romances; for the 
amatory novelettes of the Restoration and the subse- 
quent age in French and Italian tales; for SwifVs 
satiric fictions in Rabelais; and even for some of 
Defoe's narrations in the Spanish picaresque novel. 
In the self-taught Bunyan alone have we found a 
notion of a romance not borrowed directly from any 
precedent; and yet the genus Allegory, to which 
Bunyan's romance belongs, is one which he knew 
to exist, and of which there had been specimens he 
had never heard of. To Richardson, more than to 
Bunyan might be assigned the deliberate invention 
of a new form of literary art, " a new species of 
writing." In this respect it was in his favour that 
he knew no other tongue than his own, that even in 
English literature his reading had been select rather 
than extensive, and that his life had been that of a 
grave, shrewd, and rather retiring citizen, not 
sophisticated in his literary taste by second-hand 
notions of literary method picked up at clubs of 
wits, or amid the effects and clap-traps of theatres. 
Towards the end of his life, his longest journey was 
from his printing-office in Salisbury Court, to his 
suburban house at Hammersmith or at Parson's 
Green ; and, in his daily walks in the park or in the 
streets, he was to be seen, according to his own 



HO NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

description sent to a lady, as a neatly-dressed little 
figure, with his left hand in his bosom, and his right 
holding rather than using a cane, " looking directly 
" foreright, as passers-by would imagine, but observing 
a all that stirred on either hand of him, without 
" moving his short neck." When, by a kind of ac- 
cident, he was called upon to task a faculty for con- 
structing stories, for which he had had a reputation 
in his boyhood, but which had lain dormant since, 
this very narrowness of his direct acquaintance with 
the conventional life and the casual literature of his 
time, helped him to be inventive and original. 

It has been remarked by some one that the know- 
ledge of Man is something different from what is called 
knowledge of men, and that writers w 7 ho are strong 
in the one may be but moderately provided with the 
other. The remark is not expressed in the best 
manner; but it points to a truth. It was something 
to the same effect that Johnson had in view when he 
maintained that Richardson painted " characters of 
nature," whereas Fielding painted only " characters 
of manners."*- The meaning is that a man who is 
much thrown about in society, meets with so many 
facts, characters, incidents, physiognomies, and oddi- 
ties already made to his hands, that, if he has but 
an eye and a memory for these, he may take them 



RICHARDSON'S METHOD. Ill 

as they flit before him in their superficial variety, 
and, by reproducing them in certain arrangements 
and proportions in a work of fiction, obtain credit, 
and not unjustly, for representing contemporary life. 
The process, in such a case, is that which Ben 
Jonson called C( collecting the humours of men" — 
that is, taking up actual life in striking flakes and 
patches from the surface of the passing time. But 
there is another process than this, belonging to a 
higher art of fiction. It is when a writer fastens his 
attention on the central mechanism of human nature, 
selects the primary springs and forces of action, and 
works outwards to the medley of external effects 
through the imagined operation of these springs and 
forces in certain collocations, contrasts, and oppo- 
sitions. This is Shakespeare's method; and its 
capabilities are best seen in him, because he certainly 
cannot be charged with neglecting the humours of 
men, or with having a dull eye or recollection for 
any order of external facts and particulars whatsoever. 
The truth is, in such cases the external facts and 
oddities do strike as vividly and miscellaneously as 
on any man; but, as they strike, they suggest the 
mechanism which causes them and casts them up, 
and this mechanism is conceived as causing them 
and casting them up, precisely as, by a real mech- 



112 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

anician, the motions on the dial-plate of a watch are 
seen as the working of the complex interior. The 
difference between the two methods in result is, in 
reality, the difference between the historical and the 
poetical, the temporary and the permanent, in art. 
He who delineates only " characters of manners/ ' 
ceases to interest, except historically, when the man- 
ners he has delineated have vanished from the earth ; 
but he who delineates "characters of nature" — who 
paints not the avaricious man and the vain man 
peculiar to his own time, and picked up as ready- 
made curiosities, apparelled in this or that manner, 
but avarice and vanity taking flesh in his time — 
will interest historically also, inasmuch as he cannot 
choose but work in passing fact and circumstance, 
but will grasp the human heart when avarice no 
longer takes the form of tax-farming, and when 
vanity has abandoned hoops and hair-powder. 

While, in Shakespeare's case, the deeper method 
was adopted simply as the method natural to poetic 
genius, it is possible that, in Bichardson's, the very 
limitation of his acquaintance with the facts and 
manners of his time may have contributed to the 
result. Not having ranged over a wide surface of 
actual life, so as to have accumulated in much 
variety recollections of actual incidents, physiogno- 



RICHARDSON'S METHOD. 113 

mies, scenes, and characters, to be introduced into 
his novels, he was obliged, in constructing his stories, 
to set out from his experience of human nature in 
its essential principles (in which experience men 
may be sound, and deep without a very wide ac- 
quaintance at first hand with passing manners), 
and, placing certain imagined characters in certain 
imagined situations, to divine what would take place 
by their working on together. This is, accordingly, 
what Richardson does. He places a girl who is to 
be his heroine, or a man who is to be his hero, in 
a certain imagined situation, and in imaginary rela- 
tions to other personages — parents, uncles, aunts, 
and other ladies and gentlemen close to the family- 
group ; he sets these persons in motion, exhibiting 
slowly, in letters which pass among them, their 
approximations, recessions, and feelings towards each 
other; from time to time he throws in a fresh in- 
cident or a new character to complicate the history ; 
and so on he creeps to the catastrophe or the con- 
summation. His peculiar power consists throughout 
in the subtle imagination of progressive states of 
feeling rather than of changing external scenes ; in 
the minute anatomy of the human heart as worked 
upon gradually by little alterations of time, place, 
and motive, rather than in the rapid succession of 

I 



114 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

external visions and surprises. He adheres to his 
original group of personages, following them hither 
and thither, when locomotion is necessary, from 
town to country, and from country back to town, 
and taking note of such faces as are added to the 
group during these migrations — very minute, too, in 
his descriptions of dress, look, and gesture, as far as 
these personages are concerned, and of the houses and 
gardens in which they move; but bringing in no 
breadth of contiguous life or landscape ; and, on the 
whole, carrying his characters on through the story 
in a little independent world, with which, whatever 
the tyranny or the misery within, surrounding 
society has slight connexions and does not interfere. 
This disconnexion of his characters and their history 
from the surrounding medium in which they are 
supposed to be moving is the main cause of what- 
ever improbability or want of truth to fact is charged 
against Richardson. One feels that a good shrill 
shriek from the heroine at her chamber-window, or 
an appeal by any one in her confidence to the 
nearest magistrate, or the behaviour of any one of 
the persons simply as men or women would behave 
with the British law and the British customs of the 
eighteenth century in operation round about them, 
would cut the novel short at any point of its pro- 



RICH A RD SON'S ME THOD. 115 

gress. * Allow Richardson this disconnexion, however 
— let him have his characters as he fancies them, 
isolated as he fancies them, and inter-related as he 
fancies them — and his art in their government is 
admirable. He writes on and on in a plain, full, 
somewhat wordy style, not always grammatically 
perfect ; but every page is a series of minute touches, 
and each touch is from a thorough conception of the 
case which he is representing. In minute inquisi- 
tion into the human heart, and especially the female 
heart, and in the exhibition of conduct as affected 
from day to day by growing complications of feeling 
and circumstance, Richardson is a master. So en- 
tirely is his plan that of minute representation of 
feeling in its progress that his characters scarcely 
stand before us at the close as impressive creations 
or individual portraitures. We remember his Pa- 
mela, his Clarissa, his Lovelace, and so on ; but we 
remember them rather as names for certain pro- 
tracted courses of action or suffering than as beings 
flashed at once upon the imagination in their com- 
plete appearance and equipments. It is significant 
of Richardson's general method that the principal 
male character of his first novel should have no 
other name from first to last than that of " Mr. B." 
"What chance has such an anonymous gentleman 

i2 



116 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

among the crowds of ideal personages, more dis- 
tinctly named, that readers of novels carry about in 
their recollection ? Fielding wickedly availed him- 
self of the blank by changing " Mr. B." in his Joseph 
Andrews into " Squire Booby." 

A peculiarity of Richardson, advertised by him- 
self again and again as a radical difference between 
him and most of his predecessors and contemporaries, 
was that he made all his fictions serve " the cause 
of religion and virtue." This merit, in the sense in 
which he claimed it, can hardly be denied to him. 
He does not shrink from recognising immorality, its 
institutions, and its consequences to society ; his 
stories turn on such recognition ; and there are pas- 
sages in his novels, which, though they were read 
aloud in families when they first appeared, it would 
be difficult to read aloud in families now, inasmuch 
as the matters to which they refer are not esteemed 
such necessary subjects of domestic discourse as they 
once were. Honestly, however, and as a really 
pious and strict man, whose tastes, as well as his 
convictions, were in favour of propriety, Richardson 
did, in every line that he wrote, endeavour to incul- 
cate the established rules of individual and social 
ethics, and to represent deviations from them as 
censurable. Richardson's ethical teaching has, 



RICHARDSON'S MORA LITY. 117 

indeed, been spoken of by some of our best autho- 
rities as none of the highest in kind. "I do loathe 
" the cant," says Coleridge, " which can recommend 
" Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe as strictly moral, 
tl while Tom Jones is prohibited as loose. There is in 
"the latter a cheerful, sun-shiny, breezy spirit that 
"prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted with the 
" close, hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson." 
This is an opinion from a good quarter, and one can 
easily see on what it was founded. In Pamela, 
more especially, the knowingness of the girl in the 
midst of her trials and her virtue, and the satisfac- 
tion of the author and of herself in the species of 
reward assigned to her at the last, are not calculated 
according to the most heroic known definitions of 
the moral sense. "Virtue is the best policy/' 
"Hold out and he may marry you" — such, so far 
as the moral can be expressed separately, is the 
apparent moral of that novel. Such prudential 
morality, however, may, in the absence of what is 
more elevated, be very good working morality in 
this world ; and, as a serious and minute casuist in it, 
Richardson cannot but do good. And, after all, the 
question in what the moral effect of a work of 
fiction consists is far more complex and difficult than 
may be usually supposed. The moral effect of a 



118 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

novel or a poem, or any work of the kind, lies not 
so much in any specific proposition that can be 
extracted out of it as its essence, and appended to it 
in the shape of an ethical summary, as in the whole 
power of the work in all its parts to stir and instruct 
the mind, in the entire worth of the thoughts which 
it suggests, and in the number and intensity of the 
impressions which it leaves. The addition which it 
makes to the total mind, the turn or wrench which 
it gives to the mind, the collection of impressive 
pictures which it hangs on the walls of the imagina- 
tion — these are the measures of its value even 
morally. Of Richardson's novels no one will deny 
that they stir the mind powerfully, or at least pain 
it keenly, as they are read. There are in our lan- 
guage few such highly wrought histories of domestic 
English life ; and no one has written in prose 
histories of modern domestic incident approaching 
more nearly in pathetic and tragic effect to the 
old metrical dramas in which the themes were 
taken from more ancient and ideal ground. Nor is 
Richardson's idea of the proper conduct of events in 
his novels in order to a good effect, on the mind that 
vulgar one which might be thoughtlessly attributed 
to him in virtue of the scheme of his Pamela. The 
moral of his Clarissa, for example, is not virtue 



RICHARDSON'S MORALITY. 119 

rewarded, but virtue triumphant, even in death and 
infamy. There was something truly superior in the 
firmness with which the nervous old printer persisted, 
in spite of the remonstrances of his lady-correspond- 
ents, in not making that novel end happily in the 
reformation of Lovelace and his marriage to Clarissa, 
but tragically, as one for the ideal elements of which 
there could be no terrestrial reconciliation. 

A more just objection to Richardson's novels than 
that on which Coleridge and others insist, if indeed 
their objection does not resolve itself into this, is the 
limited portion of the field of human circumstance 
with which they concern themselves. They are all, 
in the main, romances of love and its consequences. 
A hero and a heroine are connected by love, on one 
side, or on both sides, or a hero is so connected with 
two heroines ; and the novel is the slow unfolding of 
the consequences on to an appropriate termination. 
Now, though this is the practice, not of Richardson 
alone, but of the majority of modern novelists, and 
especially of lady-novelists, it is worthy of cousider- 
ation that the novel is thereby greatly contracted in 
its capabilities as a form of literature. Perhaps, 
however, we can well afford one eminent novelist, 
such as Richardson, to the exclusive literary service 
of so important an interest. He had qualified him- 



120 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

self as few have done for the service. In his early- 
boyhood he had been employed by several young 
women to write their love letters for them ; and so 
he had acquired an early insight into the forms and 
intricacies of the tender passion and all its modes of 
strategy. He had been twice married, and had had 
two families of sons and daughters ; and all his life 
long he had been more in the society of women than 
of men, and had had the confidence of ladies of all 
ages, and of different ranks. He was, therefore, a 
master of love, or, at least, of the feminine variety 
of the passion, in all its minutise; and, when he 
wrote, it was of that of which he had most know- 
ledge. And yet, curiously enough, his own notions 
of the passion which he illustrated so elaborately 
were all in favour of its abatement or rational regu- 
lation. He is no friend to elopements, or to anything 
not strictly sensible and reasonable. He would have 
converted Queen Venus herself into an intelligent 
and matronly lady of calm gait and aspect ; and he 
would have clipped the wings of Cupid, dressed him 
perforce in a green tunic with gilt buttons, and 
made him walk behind his mother as a page carrying 
the prayer-book. Once, in grave jest, he shocked 
one of his lady-correspondents by arguing that 
perhaps some of the mischiefs and social anomalies 



HUMOUR AND HUMORISTS. 121 

caused by unregulated love might disappear if 
society could at any future time be arranged on a 
principle of legalised polygamy. 

The most obvious distinction between Richardson 
on the one hand, and Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne 
on the other, is that they belong, all three of them, 
to the class of Humorists, while he does not rank 
naturally in that class. Fielding, Smollett, and 
Sterne, as you know, are included by Mr. Thackeray 
in his gallery of the " Humorists of the Eighteenth 
Century;" but Richardson has no place in that 
gallery. 

On this distinction, were this the proper place for 
a full discussion of it, much might have to be said. 
The fact on which it rests is simply this, — that, while 
many writers view things seriously, and set them- 
selves to narrate events, or to enforce doctrines, or to 
frame imaginary histories, in a spirit of straight- 
forward earnestness, there are in every age also 
writers who set themselves to the same or to corre- 
sponding tasks with a smile on their faces and a 
sense of fun and irony at their hearts, and who, 
accordingly, either select out of the miscellany of 
things such as are confessedly laughable, or represent 
all things so as to bring laughter out of them. Stated 
more deeply, the fact is, that anything whatever may 



122 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

be looked at and considered in two ways — gravely and 
seriously, or ironically and with reference to something 
else which shall cause it to seem comical ; and that 
some minds tend constitutionally to the one mode of 
thought and others to the other. As to the relative 
worth or power for ultimate good of the two modes 
of thinking, it would be bold for any man to pro- 
nounce an opinion offhand. One may certainly agree 
with Goethe when he says that the predominance of 
the humorous spirit in the literature of any period 
is a sign of approaching decrepitude; and I do 
not know but that at present, when comic literature 
seems to be in ascendancy among us, and when even 
our men of greatest talent find it necessary to wear 
the cap and bells, it might be well to bear that 
observation of the German sage in mind. And yet 
— as none knew better than Goethe — a certain pro- 
portion of humorists among the literary men of 
any period is a sign and requisite of intellectual 
health ; and the very nature of humour is such that 
a preponderance of that quality in any individual 
may be consistent with the finest genius and the 
greatest speculative capacity. Is it not now a com- 
monplace in our philosophy of character that 
humour, in its highest kind, has its origin beside 
the very fountain of tears, in that sense of things 



HUMOUR AND HUMORISTS. 123 

invisible, that perpetual reference of the evanescent 
present to the everlasting and inconceivable, which 
is the one invariable constituent of all that we call 
genius ? When we name, too, some of the greatest 
humorists, usually so called, that the world has pro- 
duced — Aristophanes, Horace, Rabelais, Cervantes, 
Moliere, Swift, Burns, Jean Paul, Beranger — do we 
not feel that men of this class may be pre-eminently 
great, and that their function in the thought of the 
world may be, if not always beneficent in appearance, 
yet sometimes beautifully so, and always really 
wholesome and corrective ? Were not some of them 
masters of song also, and sons of mystery and 
sorrow? And though, in opposition to them, there 
may be named men more uniformly majestic, in 
whom humour seemed to be as deficient as in some 
of them it was excessive — men like Dante, and 
Milton, and Schiller, and Wordsworth — yet do we 
not reserve, even against these examples, as some- 
thing balancing the account, the fact that in others of 
the topmost and most comprehensive men — in Plato, 
in Chaucer, in Shakespeare, in Goethe, in Scott — 
humour was present, sometimes to the extent of half 
their genius ? On the whole, perhaps, what Goethe 
meant was, that there is a condition of things in which 
the humorous spirit in literature will reign by a kind 



124 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

of necessity as the only spirit that can find suitable 
nutriment, and that such a condition of things, 
whenever it appears, betrays an exhaustion of the 
social energy. Whatever he meant, his saying, I 
think, has a significance for us now in Britain. 
Perhaps conld we wish, in this age of abounding 
wits and humorists, for that which, from its very 
rarity, would do us most good, it would be for the 
appearance among us of a great soul that could not 
or would not laugh at all, whose every tone and syl- 
lable should be serious, and whose face should front 
the world with something of that composed subli- 
mity of look which our own Milton wore, when his 
eyes rolled in darkness in quest of suns and systems, 
or of that pitiful and scornful melancholy which 
art has fixed, for the reprehension of frivolity for 
ever, in the white mask of the Italian Dante. 

Whether such a wish would have been as fitting 
a century ago, I will not venture to say. It is 
enough to note that then already for some seventy 
years the humorous spirit had prevailed in British 
literature, and shown itself in forms of composition, 
both in verse and in prose, but more particularly in 
prose, which could not but be received as important 
additions to the stock of British authorship ; and 
that still, under Johnson's literary dictatorship, the 



; FIELDING'S NOTION OF HIS NOVELS. " 125 

same spirit of humour was at work, urging to the 
production of new prose forms. The most charac- 
teristic of these forms was the comic prose-fiction 
of Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne. Of these three 
writers, Fielding and Smollett go together as most 
nearly akin, leaving Sterne apart as a humorist of 
distinct character. 

Though Fielding's first motive towards the style 
of fiction which he introduced was that of ridiculing 
Richardson, it is very clear, from his preface to 
Joseph Andreivs, that he was aware of the novelty 
of his experiment, and had a distinct theory of the 
capabilities of the new form of writing of which it 
was to be an example. In that preface he distinctly 
refers prose fiction of every kind to the epic order 
of Poetry, and defines the comic novel to be the 
comic prose epic. " The Epic," he says, " as well as 
" the Drama, is divided into Tragedy and Comedy . . . 
ce And, further, as this Poetry may be tragic or 
" comic, I will not scruple to say it may be likewise 
" either in verse or in prose ; for, though it wants 
u one particular which the critic enumerates in the 
" constituent parts of an Epic poem, viz. Metre, yet 
"■ when any kind of writing contains all its other 
" parts, such as Fable, Action, Characters, Senti- 
" ments, and Diction, and is deficient in Metre only, 



126 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

" it seems, I think, reasonable to refer it to the 
" Epic — at least, as no critic hath thought proper to 
" range it under any other head, or to assign it a 
" particular name to itself. Thus the Telemachus of 
" the Archbishop of Cambray appears to me of the 
" epic kind, as well as the Odyssey of Homer. . . . 
" Now, a Comic Romance is a Comic Epic Poe m in 
" prose." He then goes on to distinguish between 
the genuine Comic Novel, such as he meant to intro- 
duce, and the Burlesque — this last being, as he 
defines it, a caricature of Nature, a representation 
of things monstrous and unnatural, in order to pro- 
duce ludicrous effect. Without denying the legiti- 
macy of such a mode of Art, whether in literature 
or in painting, and stipulating, moreover, that in 
his " diction" he may sometimes avail himself of 
the trick of the burlesque, he yet announces that in 
the true comic fiction, as he has conceived it, there 
must be no caricature in the "sentiments" or the 
" characters," but the closest truth to nature. " Per- 
haps," he says, " there is one reason why a comic 
" writer should, of all others, be the least excused for 
" deviating from nature — since it may not be always 
" so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great 
" and admirable ; but life everywhere furnishes an 
" accurate observer with the ridiculous." The ridi- 



THE COMIC NOVEL. 127 

culous in human life, according to Fielding, is the 
proper matter for the comic novelist ; but, lest this 
definition should seem too vague, he proceeds to say- 
that, in his view, the only source of the true ridicu- 
lous is affectation; which, again, may exist in one of 
two forms — that of Vanity, or that of Hypocrisy. 
The multiform exhibitions in human society of 
Affectation arising from Vanity, or of Affectation 
arising from Hypocrisy — these, he concludes, and 
these alone, supply the comic novelist, or writer of 
the comic prose epic, with his legitimate material. 

I do not think that this definition of the objects of 
the Ridiculous is philosophically sufficient. I believe 
that there are materials for the comic in nature as 
well as in human life — that there may be something 
laughable in the way in which a tree bends its 
branches, or a leaf is blown by the wind, or a dog 
runs to a well ; and, consequently, that many things 
are ludicrous in life, the ludicrousness of which 
cannot be resolved into vanity or hypocrisy or any 
sort of affectation. In Fielding's own novels, I be- 
lieve, there are examples of the ludicrous which 
would not square with his theory. That he should 
have heralded his first novel, however, by a theory 
so fully reasoned forth and propounded with such 
an air of critical exactness, shows that he wished the 



128 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

public to understand that he was consciously ini- 
tiating a new kind of writing. 

Not that he pretended to absolute originality. 
The very title-page of his first novel indicated the 
contrary. It ran thus: "The History of the Ad- 
" ventures of Joseph Andrews and his friend Mr. 
" Abraham Adams, written in imitation of the man- 
" ner of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote." In all 
the subsequent novels of Fielding the influence of 
Cervantes is visible. It is not less visible in the 
novels of Smollett, who, coming in the wake of 
Fielding, may be considered to have accepted, with- 
out re-proclaiming, Fielding's already published defi- 
nition of the Comic Novel, and to have offered himself 
as a second candidate for the honours of that style of 
fiction. One of Smollett's literary achievements was 
a new translation of " Don Quixote ; " and the plot 
of one of his novels — Sir Launcelot Greaves — is that 
of " Don Quixote," slightly changed. But, though 
Cervantes may be regarded as the acknowledged pro- 
totype of both Fielding and Smollett, one sees in 
them also much of the influence of an intermediate 
writer of fiction nearer their own age. This is the 
Frenchman Le Sage (1668-1747) whose Gil Bias 
and other novels — reproductions in French by a man 
of original genius of the spirit and matter of the 



FIELDING AND SMOLLETT. 129 

Spanish picaresque novels — were already familiar in 
Britain. Both Fielding and Smollett would also have 
acknowledged their obligations to other older hu- 
mourists and writers of fiction, native and foreign. 

To both Fielding and Smollett it may be allowed 
that their novels fulfilled, more completely than 
Richardson's, in respect of the variety of their con- 
tents, that definition of the novel which demands 
that it should, whether serious or comic, be the prose 
counterpart of the Epic. They are, as regards super- 
ficial extent of matter, more nearly the comic prose 
epics of their time than Richardson's are its serious 
prose epics. In each of them there is a love story, 
threading the incidents together ; but to the right 
and to the left of this story, and all along its course, 
interrupting it, and sometimes all but obliterating 
it, are fragments of miscellaneous British life, or 
even European life, humorously represented. There 
are varying breadths of landscape ; characters of all 
kinds come in ; interests of all kinds are recognised ; 
the reader is not perpetually on the rack in 
watching the feelings of the hero and the heroine, 
but is entertained with continual episodes, rambles,, 
and social allusions. 

Hence, for one thing, the novels of Fielding and 
Smollett are far more amusing, in the popular sense 

K 



130 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

of the word, than those of Richardson. If Richard- 
son's had been an advance, in point of interest, from 
the tedious romances of a former age, Fielding's and 
Smollett's must have seemed to the reading public 
of that day a still greater triumph in the art of 
literary entertainment. It was like providing a 
capital comedy, or a very rich farce, to come after 
the serious piece of the evening, and to begin when, 
though some of the graver auditors might be depart- 
ing, the theatre was sure to be filled to overflowing 
by the rush at half-price. The art of prose enter- 
tainment has been carried much farther since those 
days; but even now, Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, 
Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, and Humphry 
Clinker, are novels nearly as amusing as any we 
have ; and, if so, what must our great grandfathers 
have thought of them ? In them for the first time 
British literature possessed compositions making any 
approach, in breadth, bustle and variety of interest 
to that form of literature, always theoretically possible, 
and of which other countries had already had speci- 
mens in " Don Quixote " and "Gil Bias," — the comic 
prose epic of contemporary life. All the elements of 
interest pointed out by common-place critical tradi- 
tion as necessary in the complete epic were here 
more or less present, in so far as these elements 



FIELDING AND SMOLLETT. 131 

could take on the comic hue. There was, first, the 
" fable," more or less amusing in itself. Then there 
were the " characters," all genuine additions in the 
comic, or serio-comic style, to the gallery of ideal 
portraits bequeathed to the British imagination by 
the creative genius of former writers, and some of 
them such masterpieces of physiognomic skill, as at 
once to take conspicuous places in the gallery, and 
become favourites both with artists and with the 
public : — from Fielding, his Parson Adams, his 
Squire Western, his Mr. Airworthy, his Philosopher 
Square, his Parson Thwackum, his Partridge, his 
Amelia, &c; and from Smollett, his Strap, his Tom 
Bowling, his Apothecary Morgan, his Commodore 
Trunnion, his Jack Hatchway, his Tom Pipes, his 
Matthew Bramble, his Aunt Tabitha and her maid 
Jenkins, and his Scotch lieutenant Lismahago. In 
the " scenes," also, through which these characters 
were led — country-scenes and town-scenes, sea-scenes 
and land-scenes, scenes at home and scenes abroad, 
tavern-scenes and prison-scenes, scenes in haunts of 
London debauchery, and scenes in fashionable pump- 
rooms and ball-rooms — the reader has certainly 
amusement enough for his money. Then there were 
the "sentiments," as the critics called them — the 
opinions of the authors, brought out by the way, 
k2 



132 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

and delivered seriously or ironically; the passing 
strokes of humour and invective; the dialogues, 
dissertations, digressions, and short essays, on all 
things and sundry. Lastly, in the matter of "diction," 
so far as that could be thought of as a separate 
matter, there was all the general pleasure that could 
be derived from very good writing, by authors of 
practised talent, who had acquired a strong easy 
manner of their own, distinguishing them from 
other writers, and who could not pen many sentences 
together without some witty turn of fancy, or some 
sharp felicity of phrase. 

And yet, with all this superiority of Fielding and 
Smollett to Richardson, in breadth of epic interest 
after the comic fashion — the kind of superiority, as 
I have said, that would attract, and justly attract 
a full theatre, in a very rich and broad comedy, pre- 
sented as after piece to a serious and harrowing 
drama of domestic incident — one can see on what 
grounds some critics might still prefer Richardson. 
This might be done, even although much store were 
not set on the greater formality of Richardson's 
ethics, and critics were to agree with Coleridge in his 
opinion, that, notwithstanding the frequent coarse- 
ness of the scenes and the language in Fielding and 
Smollett, there is more of manly health in their 



FIELDING AND SMOLLETT. 133 

general views of things than in those of the pompous 
little printer, cogitating his histories of virtue in his 
hot parlour at Parson's Green, and reading them 
bit by bit at the tea-table to a circle of listening 
ladies. 

Such an opinion might be entertained even on 
grounds of biographical knowledge. Fielding, with 
all his faults and all his recklessness, was a manly 
great-hearted fellow, with more of the right heroic 
blood and true kingly talent in him, though he 
did but occupy a police bench, and live by his 
wits, than was to be found in the Austrian Haps- 
burgs, with whom he counted kin ; and we see Mr. 
Thackeray (as good a judge of character as any 
man), stretching his hand through the intervening 
century, and grasping the hand of Fielding, as of 
the man in that time whom he could, on the whole, 
like best. Need we say that Fielding would have 
returned the grasp with interest ? And so, with 
a difference, of Smollett. He was by no means the 
idle half-reprobate he represents in his Roderick 
Random. He was often wrong and always irascible, 
continually fancying himself aggrieved, and always 
with a quarrel on his hands ; but he was as proud, 
warm-hearted, and mettlesome a Scot as had then 
crossed the Tweed — of a spirit so independent, we 



134 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

are told, that lie never asked a favour for himself 
from any great man in his life ; paying his way 
honestly, and helping liberally those about him who 
were in distress ; and altogether, so far from being 
a mere pleasure-seeker, that there was probably no 
man then in or near London, who stayed more at 
home, or worked more incessantly and laboriously 
to prevent the world from being a shilling the worse 
for him. He ruined his health by over-work. 

Such being the men, it can hardly be supposed, 
even if we allow for the effects of a lax literary 
conscience, or of a desire to write what would sell, 
that the novels which the men wrote could be intrin- 
sically immoral. There are, doubtless, passages in 
them which we should not like to see read by "young 
ladies in white muslin;" and this is a pity. But, if 
the test of endurable literature were that it should 
always and in every part be fit to read, or to be 
fancied as read, by young ladies in white muslin, what 
a bonfire of books there would have to be, and what 
a sacrifice to the susceptibilities of white muslin of 
tons of literary matter, both historical and fictitious? 
very innocent and very instructive for veteran philo- 
sophers in broad-cloth, for medical and moral 
students, and for plain rustics in corduroys ! There 
may surely be " carmina non prius audita " which 



FIELDING AND SMOLLETT. 135 

might think it fit to 
sing, though not "virginibus puerisque." This con- 
sideration, it is true, will not absolve Fielding and 
Smollett from blame, seeing that they knew well 
enough that girls and boys were likely to be the 
majority of their audience, and seeing, moreover, 
that in what they addressed to others, one cannot 
always find that they kept themselves strictly up 
to the highest possibilities of the occasion. Still, 
taking all things into account — the legitimacy in 
literature of much that may not be fit for family 
reading, the difference of taste in that age as to what 
was fit for family reading, and Richardson's own 
offences in this respect according to the modern 
standard — it is not on this particular ground that 
the shrewdest admirers of Richardson would contend 
in his favour. They would rather do so, I fancy, 
on the ground occupied by Johnson on the same 
question, when he argued that Richardson's style 
of art was the deeper, inasmuch as he painted 
" characters of nature," while Fielding and Smollett 
painted chiefly " characters of manners." 

For my part, I cannot deny that I feel something 
of this difference, though perhaps" scarcely to the 
extent in which it was asserted by Johnson. It 
does seem to me that both Fielding and Smollett — 



136 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

broader as they are than Richardson, more rich, 
more various, more interesting — did work more 
according to the method of sheer superficial observa- 
tion and the record of humours presented to their 
hand, and less according to the method of ideal 
development from within outwards. Both Fielding 
and Smollett seem to me to have been men of true 
humour, of true heart and genius, who, having 
betaken themselves to story- writing, and making it 
their main object to be popular and amusing, did not 
trouble themselves very severely with human nature 
in its depths and intricacies, but seized incidents, 
characters, and current beliefs, as they were presented 
in the actual whirl of British life in their time, 
revelling in comic plenty of all sorts, rather than 
caring for ideal unity or ultimate truth, and only 
now and then, when they struck out an original 
character like Squire Western or Commodore Trun- 
nion, or when by chance they fell upon a vein of 
feeling constitutionally strong in themselves, reaching 
the poetic, the general, the truly elemental. 

It is consistent with what has been just said as to 
the predominance of the historical over the poetic 
method in Fielding and Smollett, that both of them 
make so much use in their novels of the device of 
locomotion. They move their characters about, 



FIELDING AND SMOLLETT. 137 

carrying them from inn to inn along country-roads, 
from London to the extremities of Britain, and back 
again to London ; and by this means they make a 
rapid succession of scenes and circumstances pass 
before the reader's view, without much necessity 
for preserving a connexion in the series. How many 
both of Fielding's and of Smollett's scenes are laid 
in country inns ! Now, although this is one of the 
old epic methods, as in the Odyssey, and although in 
"Don Quixote" the same method is followed, and 
Spain is brought before us as the region of the 
wanderings of the Knight and his attendant Squire, 
it is yet a method likely to be resorted to in many 
cases, simply as admitting the largest superficial 
variety of scenes and incidents with the least trouble 
to the thorough imagination. It is in itself a fine 
method, having certain advantages over the other; 
and, indeed, where the story is that of the adventures 
of an individual, or of one or two persons, and not 
that of a national enterprise, the natural epic pre- 
cedent will be the Odyssey and not the Iliad. No 
fair critic, however, will venture to say that Fielding, 
and much less that Smollett, has used the method 
with so much of true poetic mastery as Cervantes. 
They lead their heroes about over Britain and the 
Continent, and thus, while narrating the adventures 



138 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

of these heroes, they make physiognomies, events 
and objects of all kinds flit in profusion before the 
reader's eyes; but one sees frequently that these 
are brought in on their own account to add to the 
general fund of amusement, and that they might 
have been brought in equally well had the work been 
a historical picture of British and Continental man- 
ners, and not the story of the adventures of such 
imaginary beings as Tom Jones and Peregrine Pickle. 
In the very circumstance, however, that the novels 
of Fielding and Smollett contain so much that is 
merely historical delineation, they have a peculiar 
interest for us now. They are, in many respects, 
more full and vivid accounts of British manners in 
the middle of the eighteenth century than are to be 
found in the professed histories of the period. I 
think all of you will agree with me that, if we accept 
them as true accounts, we would rather remain in 
our own century, with all its inconveniences, than 
go back into such a state ot things as that over which 
Goorge II. reigned, and George III. for a time, and 
in which our great-grandfathers and great-grand- 
mothers moved and had their being. What an un- 
wholesome atmosphere, what filth, what riot, what 
social cruelty and confusion ! Here is the programme 
of one of the chapters in a novel of Smollett's : — 



FIELDING AND SMOLLETT. 139 

(i I am visited by Freeman, with whom I appear in public 
and am caressed — Am sent for by Lord Quiverwit, whose 
presence I put in a passion — Narcissa is carried off by her 
brother — I intend to pursue him and am dissuaded by my 
friend — Engage in play and lose all my money — Set out for 
London — Try my fortune at the gaming-table without success 
— Eeceive a letter from Narcissa — Bilk my tailor." 

This is a sample of British life a hundred years 
ago, as represented in Smollett's novels. In Fielding 
the element is not, on the whole, quite so coarse; 
but in him, too, there is so much of the same kind 
of scenery and incident that we see that both 
novelists were painting life and manners as they 
thought they saw them. As we read, we cannot 
always avoid squeamishness. The highwaymen, the 
stupid country justices, the brutality and tyranny of 
men in office, the Draconic state of the laws and 
their foul administration, the executions, the nests of 
thieves in large towns — all this we can accept in 
the aggregate as but older forms of what we have 
amongst ourselves ; but, when we get into a country 
inn, or into a prison, or into a mean London ordi- 
nary, and have its worst minutiae thrust upon our 
senses — or when, as is the case in every other page, 
we see the hero and a few of the other personages in 
some such locality, engaged in a fight, and shins are 
kicked and heads broken, and the parson has a tub 
of hog's blood or some equally delicious fluid thrown 



140 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

over him by an enraged landlady, and caps and 
underclothing are torn off in the fray, and we hear 
oaths and certain now unutterable anatomical allu- 
sions in every sentence from man or woman — then 
our very disgust makes us sceptical as to the truth 
of the representation, and we ask ourselves, " What- 
ever the century, can this have been British life ? " 
In a certain sense, we are obliged to conclude that 
it was. To authorize the conclusion, we have but to 
compare Fielding with Smollett, and both with their 
contemporary Hogarth, and all three with others of 
the same time who have left us reports of external 
manners more professedly historical. Nay, we have 
but to recollect what squalor, what horrors for the 
ear and the eye, our own generation carries in it — 
shut down under hatches, it may be, but still part and 
parcel of contemporary reality — to be aware that, if all 
life now were thrown up into literature by spade and 
mattock on the plan of literal representation of facts 
individually, it might seem as if the age of the early 
Georges was not after all more uninhabitable by 
sensitive minds than the present, and as if every age 
carried about the same amount of disagreeable matter 
in it as every other, though with variations, not 
unimportant, as to the manner and the place of 
stowage. And here occurs an observation which I 



FIELDING AND SMOLLETT, HI 

think might be largely verified. It depends, I be- 
lieve, very much on the style of art in which any age 
chooses to hand down the tradition of itself whether 
that age shall seem in after times a delightful one to 
have lived in. Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were 
contemporaries; and Shakespeare, though he threw 
his fictions into the past, wove them out of his ex- 
perience of present human nature. I appeal to any 
reader of the two poets whether, if he could belong 
either to Shakespeare's world or to Ben Jonson's, he 
would not at once choose Shakespeare's. Does it 
not seem as if life would have been a much more 
healthy, a much more delightful thing in the one 
than in the other — as if to have co-existed with 
Falstaff even, and gone about with him in London 
and Windsor, albeit with Pistol swaggering in the 
company and the fire of Bardolph's nose to light 
one through the streets, would have been to live in 
a more genial and enjoyable set of conditions, with 
greater spiritual freedom in one's self, and a finer 
environment of all the human virtues in others, than 
would have been possible if Ben Jonson's social 
accounts of the same age are to be received as more 
truly authentic ? They are authentic ; but they are 
authentic after the historic method of art, which 
takes life in the particular ; and Shakespeare's repre- 



142 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

sentations are truer still, more deeply and thoroughly 
true, because they are after the poetic method, which 
takes life in the general and the invariable. And so 
with the age of the early Georges. If the life of that 
time, as it is presented in the pages of Fielding and 
Smollett and in the pictures of Hogarth, seems such 
that we would rather remain where we are and be 
ourselves at any disadvantage than go back to be our 
great-grandfathers, yet we have other representations 
of life at the same period in which, simply because 
they are poetically just, all seems happier and 
sweeter. Inasmuch, however, as we have fewer com- 
memorations of that age by itself in the poetical 
than in the historical style of art, may not the infe- 
rence be to its actual disadvantage ? This would be 
to say that an age which has not left us a sufficiency 
of poetical as well as of real representations of itself 
cannot have been fundamentally a genial or beautiful 
one. Perhaps so it is. 

On a comparison of Fielding with Smollett it is 
easy to point out subordinate differences between 
them. Critics have done this abundantly and 
accurately enough. Smollett, they tell us, is even 
more historical in his method, deals more in actual 
observation and reminiscence, and less in invention 
and combination of reminiscence, than Fielding. 



FIELDING AND SMOLLETT. 143 

His notion of a story, still more than Fielding' s, is 
that of a traveller, moving over a certain extent of 
ground, and through a succession of places, each 
full of things to be seen and of odd physiognomies 
to be quizzed. Fielding's construction is the more 
careful and well considered, his evolution of his story 
the more perfect and harmonious, his art altogether 
the more classic and exquisite. His humour too, is 
the finer and more subtle, like that of a well- 
wrought comedy ; while Smollett's is the coarser 
and more outrageous like that of a broad farce. 
Both are satirists ; but Fielding's satire is that of a 
man of joyous and self-possessed temperament, who 
has come to definite conclusions as to what is to be 
expected in the world, while Smollett writes with 
pain and under irritation. Fielding has little 
scruple in hanging his villains, as if he had made 
up his mind that the proper treatment of villains 
was their physical annihilation ; Smollett, with all 
his fiercer indignation, punishes his villains too, but 
generally deals with them in the end as if they 
might be curable. If Fielding's, on the whole, as 
Mr. Thackeray and most critics argue, is ""the 
greater hand," there are peculiarities in Smollett in 
virtue of which Scott and others have hesitated to 
admit his absolute inferiority so easily as might be 



144 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

expected, and have ranked, him, all in all, as Field- 
ing's rival. Some of Smollett's characters are as 
powerful creations as any in Fielding ; and. he has 
given us a range of sea characters in Tom Bowling, 
Trunnion, Hatchway, &c, to which there is nothing 
similar in the works of the other. In sheerly 
ludicrous episode, also — in the accumulation of absurd 
and grotesque detail till the power of laughter can 
endure no more — Smollett has perhaps surpassed 
Fielding. There is also a rhetorical strength of 
language in Smollett which Fielding rarely exhibits; 
a power of melodramatic effect to which Fielding 
does not pretend; and a greater constitutional 
tendency to the sombre and the terrible. There was 
potentially more of the poet in Smollett than in 
Fielding; and there are passages in his writings 
approaching nearer, both in feeling and in rhythm, 
to lyric beauty. Lastly, Smollett possesses one 
interesting peculiarity for readers north of the 
Tweed, in his Scotticism. Had he remained in 
Scotland, becoming an Edinburgh lawyer like his 
cousins, or settling in medical practice in Glasgow, 
the probability is that he would still have pursued 
authorship, and have left writings in his own peculiar 
vein, more Scottish in their substance than those 
that now bear his name, and so perhaps linking the 



STERNE. 145 

infancy of North-British literature in Allan Ramsay, 
with its maturity in Burns and Sir Walter. But 
though his fortunes carried him out of Scotland, the 
Scot was always strong in him. In his first novel, 
it is as a young Scot that he starts on the voyage of 
life; throughout his whole career he looks back 
with affection to the land of his birth, and even 
fights her political battles against what he considers 
to be English misconception and prejudice; and 
his last novel of all, written when he was a lingering 
invalid on the Italian coast, is the dying Scotch- 
man's farewell to Scotland. Curiously enough, this 
last novel, though the most literally historical of 
all that he wrote, is, in its spirit and matter, the 
finest and mellowest, the most truly classical and 
poetical. Though Roderick Random and Peregrine 
Pickle should cease to be read, Scotchmen would still 
have an interest in preserving Humphry Clinker. 

The humour of Sterne is not only very different 
from that of Fielding and Smollett, but is something 
unique in our literature. He also was a professed 
admirer of Cervantes; to as large an extent as 
Swift he adopted the whimsical and perpetually 
digressive manner of Rabelais; and there is proof 
that he was well acquainted with the works of pre- 
ceding humorists less familiarly known in Ed gland. 

L 



146 : NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

But he was himself a humorist by nature — 
a British or Irish Yorick, with differences from any 
of those who might have borne that name before 
him after their imaginary Danish prototype ; and, 
perpetually as he reminds us of Rabelais, his 
Shandean vein of wit and fancy is not for a moment 
to be regarded as a mere variety of Pantagruelism. 
There is scarcely anything more intellectually ex- 
quisite than the humour of Sterne. To very fasti- 
dious readers much of the humour of Fielding or of 
Smollett might come at last to seem but buffoonery ; 
but Shakespeare himself, as one fancies, would have 
read Sterne with admiration and pleasure. 

Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey 
were certainly novelties in English prose writing. 
The first peculiarity that strikes us in them, con- 
sidered as novels, is the thin style of the fiction in 
comparison either with that of Fielding or with 
that of Smollett. There is little or no continuous 
story. That special constituent of epic interest 
which arises from the fable or the action is alto- 
gether discarded, and is even turned into jest ; and 
all is made to depend on what the critics called the 
characters, the sentiments, and the diction. As to 
the characters, who knows not that group of originals, 
Shandy the elder, Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, 



STERNE. 147 

Dr. Slop, the Widow Wadman, &c? These were 
" characters of nature/'' and not " characters of 
manners/' — creations of a fine fancy working in an 
ideal element, and not mere copies or caricatures of 
individualities actually observed. And how good 
they all are, what heart as well as oddity there is 
in them ! One feels that one could have lived cheer- 
fully and freely in the vicinity of Shandy Hall, 
whereas it is only now and then among the characters 
of Fielding and Smollett that this attraction is felt 
by the reader. Coleridge, who has noted as one of 
Sterne's great merits this faith in moral good as ex- 
hibited in his favourite characters, noted also his 
physiognomic skill and his art in bringing forward 
and giving significance to the most evanescent 
minutiae in thought, feeling, look, and gesture. In 
the dissertations, digressions, and interspersed whim- 
sicalities of Sterne we see the same art of minute 
observation displayed ; while we are perpetually 
entertained and surprised by reminiscences from 
out-of-the-way authors (many of them plagiarisms 
from Burton), by remarks full of wit and sense, by 
subtleties of a metaphysical intellect, and by quaint 
flights of a gay and delicate, but bold imagination. 
The "tenderness" of Sterne, his power of "pa- 
thetic" writing, all his readers have confessed ; nor 
l2 



148 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

even can the artificiality of much of his pathos take 
away the effect on our sympathies. Sensibility — 
a capacity for being easily moved — was the quality 
he gave himself out as possessing personally in a 
high degree, and as most desirous of representing 
and diffusing by his writings, and he certainly suc- 
ceeded. So far as sensibility can be taught by 
fiction, his works teach it, and perhaps it was one of 
his uses at the time when he lived that he had 
chosen to be the apostle of a quality which was 
otherwise greatly at a discount in contemporary 
literature. Add to all the exquisite accuracy and 
finish of Sterne's diction. Even now the grace, the 
insinuating delicacy, the light lucidity, the diamond- 
like sparkle of Sterne's style make reading him a 
peculiar literary pleasure. One could cull from his 
pages, and especially from his Tristram Shandy, a 
far greater number of passages for a book of elegant 
extracts than from the works of Fielding or Smollett. 
Several such passages are universal favourites already. 
Mr. Thackeray, I am aware, has been very severe 
on Sterne, speaking far less of his genius as a writer 
than of his personal character, as seen in his life 
and his letters. I do not know that he is a whit 
more severe than the evidence warrants. Sterne's 
letters, and what is known of his life, do give a very 



STERNE. 149 

disagreeable impression of him, and are not calcu- 
lated to enhance the value of the " sensibility " 
which he preaches. Nor is his portrait by Reynolds 
pleasant — fine eyes, but with a lowering expression, 
and the mouth sarcastic and sensual. We see him 
a slender hectic man, going about in his parish, or 
in London, or on the Continent, a prey to moping 
fits, cherishing all kinds' of thrills and morbid ner- 
vous ecstasies, and indulging in tears as a habitual 
luxury; but out of his books we do not discern 
much of heart, or of real kindliness, much less 
of principle. It was Wordsworth, I believe, who 
objected to mixing up the biography of a writer 
with the criticism of his works. If there is any 
instance in which one could wish to agree with such 
a canon, it is certainly that of Sterne. Believing 
as I do, however, that we ought not to agree with 
Wordsworth in such a rule, and that the deepest 
literary criticism is that which connects a man's 
writings most profoundly and intimately with his 
personality, conceived comprehensively and with 
central accuracy, I can only hope that, if we had 
the means of investigating Sterne's character more 
largely and exactly, we should find the man, after 
all, as good as his genius. I believe, too, that Mr. 
Thackeray rates the genius of Sterne much too low, 



150 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

and that, if the verdict of living readers of sufficient 
culture were taken, or if a list were made of eminent 
writers, even of a thoughtful and serious cast, who 
have admired him, Sterne's proper place among our 
British humourists would seem to be much higher 
than that which Mr. Thackeray has assigned to him. 
What is objectionable in his writings is well known, 
and cannot be palliated. That he was a clergyman 
makes the offence naturally greater. " Alas, poor 
Yorick ! ?* Had he been a layman, like Fielding, 
more might have been pardoned to him, or there 
might have been less requiring pardon ! 

Kichardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne, carry 
us from the middle of the reign of George II. to the 
close of the first decad of that of his successor. 
During the first ten years of the reign of George III., 
and while Smollett and Sterne were still alive, the 
literature of British prose-fiction received additions 
from other pens. Three works of this date deserve 
special notice, as differing in kind from any men- 
tioned heretofore, and also from each other : — 
Johnson's Rasselas, written in 1759; Goldsmith's 
Vicar of Wakefield, written in 1761, but not pub- 
lished till 1766 ; and Walpole's Castle of Otranto, 
published in 1764, under the guise of a translation 



OTHER NOVELISTS. i 151 

from an old Italian romance. Rasselas, between 
which and Voltaire's " Candide," there is at once an 
analogy and a contrast, is less a novel or tale, than 
a series of Johnsonian reflections, strung on a thread 
of fictitious narrative. " Ye who listen with credulity 
to the whispers of fancy," it begins, " and pursue 
with eagerness the phantoms of hope, who expect 
that age will perform the promises of youth, and 
that the deficiencies of the present day will be sup- 
plied by the morrow, attend to the history of Ras- 
selas, Prince of Abyssinia." And so on the story 
rolls, poetic and gloomy, like a bit of the Black Sea ! 
There could not be a greater contrast between this 
work of the ponderous and noble Samuel, and the 
charming prose idyl of dear Irish Goldy. But, what 
need to speak of the Vicar of Wakefield, or of the 
genius of its author % The Castle of Otranlo may 
more properly require a word or two. It was " an 
attempt," says the author, "to blend the two kinds 
of Romance, the ancient and the modern. In the 
former, all was imagination and improbability ; in 
the latter, nature is always intended to be, and some- 
times has been, copied with success. Invention has 
not been wanting, but the great resources of fancy 
have been dammed up by a strict adherence to 
common life." By way of experiment, in reviving 



152 NOVELS OE THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

the more imaginative style of romance, Walpole had 
bethought himself of a mediaeval story of an Italian 
castle, the human tenants of which should act 
naturally, but should be surrounded by supernatural 
circumstances and agencies leading them on to their 
fate. I confess that on reperusing the story the 
other day, I did not find my nerves affected as they 
were when I read it first. The mysterious knock- 
ings and voices, the pictures starting from the 
wainscot, the subterranean vaults, and even the great 
helmet with the nodding black plumes in the court- 
yard, had lost their horror ; and Walpole seemed to 
me a very poor master of the Gothic business, or of 
poetic business of any kind. The attempt, however, 
is interesting as a hark-back to medievalism, at a 
time when medievalism was but little in fashion. 
As a virtuoso Walpole had acquired a certain artifi- 
cial taste for the Gothic ; and his u Gothic Story," 
as he called it, did something to bring to the minds 
of British readers, on its first publication, the recol- 
lection that there had been a time in the world, 
when men lived in castles, believed in the devil, and 
did not take snuff, or wear powdered wigs. 

To make the list of the British novelists complete 
down to the point which we have agreed in this 
lecture to consider as, in literary respects, the termi- 



OTHER NOVELISTS. 153 

nation of the eighteenth century, I should have to 
go on and say something of the following writers : — 
Charles Johnstone, the author of the Adventures of a 
Guinea (1760), besides other now-forgotten novels ; 
Henry Mackenzie of Edinburgh, whose Man of Feel- 
ing, Man of the World, and Julia de Roubigne, were 
published between 1770 and 1780 ; Miss Clara Reeve, 
the authoress of the Old English Baron (1777) ; 
Miss Fanny Burney, afterwards Madame D'Arblay, 
whose Evelina and Cecilia, the two best of her novels, 
appeared in 1778 and 1782 respectively; William 
Beckford, the author of the Oriental Romance of 
Vathek (1784) ; Richard Cumberland, better known 
as a dramatist, whose first venture as a novelist was 
his Arundel in 1789; Robert Bage, the Quaker, 
four of whose novels (now little read, but deemed 
worthy of republication by Scott in Ballantyne's 
Collection of British Novelists) appeared before 
1789 ; and Dr. John Moore, of Glasgow (the father 
of Sir John Moore, and the friend and biographer of 
Smollett), whose novel of Zeluco was published in 
1786. But though all of these were writers of talent, 
and though some of their novels might deserve 
separate recognition on account of peculiarities that 
might be detected in them, they may all be con- 
sidered — so far, at least, as I am acquainted with 



154 NOVELS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

them — as having adopted the manner of some one 
or other of their recent predecessors. Johnstone is 
represented as a kind of composition of Smollett 
and Le Sage, with a more coarse and bitter spirit 
of satire than is found in either ; Mackenzie has a 
general resemblance to Sterne; Miss Reeve's Old 
English Baron was a professed imitation of Walpole's 
Castle of Otranto ; and so with the rest. It is not 
till about or a little after the year 1789, that we see 
a new order of novelists arising ; of whom we are to 
take account in our next lecture. Meanwhile, let us 
bear in mind the fact that the British novel-writing 
of the eighteenth century had done much not only 
to enrich our prose-literature and to exercise our 
prose-faculty at home, but also to increase our repu- 
tation and our intellectual influence abroad. Till 
the times of Defoe and Richardson, we had been, in 
the article of Novels and Romances, if not in prose 
literature generally, an importing rather than an 
exporting nation ; but our novelists of the eighteenth 
century turned the current the other way, aud since 
then we have exported rather than imported. During 
Goethe's youth, all educated persons on the Conti- 
nent were reading our Richardson, our Fielding, our 
Smollett, our Sterne, our Goldsmith. 



155 



LECTURE III. 

SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

" Edina ! Scotia's darling seat ! 

All hail thy palaces and towers, 
"Where once, beneath a monarch's feet, 

Sat Legislation's sovereign powers ! 
From marking wildly-scattered flowers, 

As on the banks of Ayr I strayed, 
And singing lone the lingering hours, 

I shelter in thy honoured shade ! " 

So sang Burns, with genuine enthusiasm, though 
not in his best literary strain, when first, a visitor 
from his native Ayrshire, he saluted the Scottish 
capital. At that time Edinburgh merited the salu- 
tation, even had it been expressed better. The Old 
Town was there as we still see it, or more perfect 
and untouched — the most romantic aggregate of 
natural height and hollow, and of quaint and massive 
building raised thereon by the hand of man, that 
existed within the circuit of Britain; the ridge of 
the High Street alone, from its crown in the old 



156 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

craggy Castle down to its foot in Holyrood Palace 
and Abbey, forming a range of the antique and the 
picturesque in street-architecture such as no other 
British city could exhibit. And then the scenery 
surrounding! Calton Hill near and ready for its 
monuments; the Lion of Arthur's Seat grimly keeping 
guard ; the wooded Corstorphines lying soft on one 
side; the larger Pentlands looming behind at a 
greater distance; down from the main ridge, and 
across the separating chasm, with its green and 
rocky slopes, the beginnings of a new city spilt out 
of the old; and, over these beginnings, the flats of 
the Forth, the Forth' s own flashing waters, and, still 
beyond them, sea and land in fading variety to the 
far horizon — the shores of Fife distinctly visible, 
and, under a passing burst of sunlight, the purple 
peaks of the Highland hills ! Sunlight or mist, 
summer or winter, night or day, where was there 
such another British city ? Then fill this city with 
its historical associations. Let the memories of old 
Scottish centuries be lodged within it as they were 
when Burns first saw it, and the actual relics of 
these centuries in their yet undiminished abundance ; 
let its streets, its alleys, nay its individual "lands" 
and houses be thought of as still retaining the 
legends and traditions, some grotesque and others 



EDINBURGH. 157 

ghastly, of the defunct Scottish life that had passed 
through them, and left its scars on their very wood- 
work, and its blood-stains and wine-stains on their 
very stones ! All this Burns was a man to remember, 
and to this he makes due allusion also in his ode : — 

" With awe-struck thought and pitying tears 

I view that noble stately dome, 
Where Scotia's kings of other years, 

Famed heroes, had their royal home ! 
Alas ! how changed the years to come ! 

Their royal name low in the dust ! 
Their hapless race wild- wandering roam ; 

Though rigid law cries out ' 'twas just ! ' " 

But he recognizes also other and more present claims 
in the Edinburgh of his day to his reverence, and 
to that of other Scotchmen : — 

" Here Justice from her native skies 

High wields her balance and her rod ; 
There Learning with his eagle eyes 
Seeks Science in her coy abode." 

Yes ; among the 70,000 souls or thereby who then 
constituted the population of Edinburgh, there was 
a greater proportionate number of men of intellectual 
and literary eminence than in any other British 
community, not excepting London. A North-British 
Literature — so to be named as being distinct from 
that general British Literature which had London 



158 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

for its centre, and which reckoned among its contri- 
butors those Scotchmen and Irishmen, as well as 
Englishmen, who chanced to have made London their 
home — had by this time come into existence and 
established itself. The date of the rise of this North- 
British Literature had been the reign of George II. ; 
and Edinburgh had naturally become its centre, 
though Glasgow and Aberdeen assisted. At the 
time of Burns' s visit, the Edinburgh stars belonging 
to this Literature were sufficiently numerous. Hume 
had been ten years dead, and some others had also 
disappeared; but Adam Smith and Monboddo and 
Blair and Robertson and Tytler and Henry and 
Hailes and Adam Eerguson, and the poets Home 
and Blacklock, and Henry Mackenzie and Harry 
Erskine, and the chemist Black, and Dugald Stewart, 
and others intermingled with these, formed together 
a very tolerable cluster of Northern Lights. Even 
as far as London their radiance could be seen, when 
Englishmen turned their eyes, which they rarely do, 
to the north; and, partly in compliment to them, 
partly with reference to the new local architecture, 
Edinburgh had begun to be called " The Modern 
Athens." The Ayrshire ploughman came into the 
midst of these men; received their praises and 
advices, and took the measure of them severally by 



EDINBURGH. 159 

his own standard; and went back, little modified 
apparently by what he had seen, but full to his 
dying day of a Scotchman's respect for the capital 
of his native land. 

What Burns then felt towards Edinburgh I believe 
that all educated Scotchmen, or all Scotchmen pos- 
sessing anything of that amor pati'ice with which 
Scotchmen generally are credited, felt also in vary- 
ing degree. Not an Ayrshire Scot alone, but an 
Aberdeenshire Scot, or a Scot from the west coast, 
or a Scot from Caithness or the remote Orkneys, 
must have regarded Edinburgh as the seat of his 
country's most memorable traditions, the centre of 
her general life, the pride of her common heart. To 
make a pilgrimage thither was, in those days of 
difficult travel, a duty of love to the distant pro- 
vincials who had conceived the city as yet but from 
book and from fancy; and to have actually seen 
Edina's towers and palaces was to retain the patriotic 
vision for ever, and to blend it with the local and 
nearer imagery of their special homes. Her very 
dust to them was dear. 

Seventy years have elapsed since then ; but is it, 
or needs it be, different now? No; a thousand 
times No ! The Old City is there still, hacked by 
the pickaxe, and scathed by fires, and maltreated, 



160 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

perhaps more than was necessary, by so-called im- 
provements, but destined to resist the pickaxe, and 
fires, and improvements, till the picturesque ceases 
from the earth and the Castle has a Russian garri- 
son. The Calton Hill has received its monuments ; 
the Lion of Arthur's Seat still keeps guard; the 
Corstorphines are still softly wooded, and the Pent- 
lands loom quiet where they did ; to the south there 
is new beauty of building and of gardens over the 
fields ; the great lamp-lit chasm under the ridge still 
separates the new from the old ; and, when the 
cannon speaks from beside Mons Meg, and the flash 
flickers to the shores of Fife, the reverberation, ere 
it reaches the Forth, rattles the windows of a new 
city which has occupied the space since Burns saw it, 
and which, whatever may be its faults architecturally, 
forms, when looked down upon from the mouth of 
Meg, a sight the like of which 2" have never seen. 
We have not been doing very much of political or 
national history in Edinburgh these seventy years — 
there having been an end of that " auld sang " at 
the Union or at the Forty-five ; still, even in this 
way, we have added something, civilly and ecclesias- 
tically, to the old store of reminiscences. Parliament 
House still stands where it did ; we can still study 
the physiognomies of Scotch judges on the bench, 



EDINBURGH. 161 

if not of such originals as Kames or Esky ; and I 
should like to know where in Britain there is such 
another peripatetic academy as that which marches 
up and down every day during term-time, wigged 
and gowned, in the great ante-room of your Law 
Courts. That sight is as good as a Parliament any 
day, and answers, I doubt not, a good many parlia- 
mentary purposes. But, after all, it is to the social 
and literary history of Edinburgh since Burns came 
to visit it — to the men who, since his time, have been 
and gone, and have mingled their minds with its 
activity, and left their works and their memories as 
a bequest to its keeping, and as a proof to all the 
world besides what men could live in Edinburgh 
and have their genius nursed amidst its circum- 
stances, Parliament or no Parliament — it is to this 
that Edinburgh can point as the true addition to its 
educating influences, and to its associations of interest 
and delight, since the days of Burns. That North 
British Literature which had then begun its course 
and taken Edinburgh for its centre, has advanced, 
with no diminished productiveness, during the seventy 
intervening years. As before, Scotland has still 
spared, and perhaps in greater numbers than before, 
many of her sons for the service of general British 
Literature, as organized more especially, and by 

M 



162 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

commercial necessity, in London; but she has re- 
tained many of them to herself, has found the most 
proper footing for a goodly proportion of these in her 
own capital, and in what they have done there has 
had her pleasure and her reward. Among the men 
who have trod the streets of Edinburgh since Burns's 
days, and who, whether born within her precincts or 
only drawn thither from other parts of Scotland, 
have spent portions of their lives as her familiar citi- 
zens, what men there have been ! Scott drew his 
first breath in Edinburgh ; here he was living, a fair- 
haired youth of fifteen, when black Burns passed 
through ; and here he grew up to be the man that 
the world was to hear of. Jeffrey also was born in 
Edinburgh, and here he lived and died. Chalmers 
came from Anster village, and Glasgow and St. An- 
drew's had him first ; but Edinburgh had the honour 
of his old white head — which, oh, that never I can 
see again ! "Wilson, the magnificent, had his dwell- 
ing here ; here he chanted his prose-poetry and 
shook, so savage, his yellow mane. Hither did 
northern Cromarty send her Scandinavian Hugh 
Miller ; he explored your quarries and sea-beaches, 
and was a silent power among you till his big heart 
burst. Lastly, Hamilton is gone — the Scottish Sta- 
gnate, the metaphysician of recent Europe. Others 



SCOTT AND EDINBURGH. 163 

I could name, and others will occur to you ; but 
these are a pre-eminent few. 

Of the men I have mentioned no one was so 
thoroughly identified with Edinburgh as Scott. He > 
if any one, is the true genius loci. It is not without 
significance that in the very centre of the city there 
rises that monument to his memory which every eye 
in Edinburgh is compelled to rest on several times 
every day, whatever other object it misses. There 
his white statue sits, as it should, quite in the city's 
centre ! Edinburgh is the city of Sir Walter Scott. 
There are, perhaps, those hearing me who remember 
him as he actually walked in these streets — who 
have watched his stalwart figure as it limped along 
on the footway before them, or, meeting him with a 
friend, have watched his bushy eyebrows and saga- 
cious countenance, and overheard the burr of his 
voice. To me this is but a fancy ; but even to me so 
much is the man identified with the place, that, as I 
pass the stationary statue, I seem to see the original 
as he was, and to follow him, and him alone, in the 
moving crowd on the other side of Princes Street. 
That was his walk on earth ; and there, be sure, his 
spirit haunts, save when he revisits Abbotsford ! 

With Scott's birth in Edinburgh, and with his 
education and residence here, the fancy will con- 
M 2 



164 SCO TT A ND HIS I NFL UENCE. 

nect, and perhaps an actual study of the man's life 
would also in some degree connect, those two qual- 
ities of his genius to which it owed what was most 
characteristic in its action on the poetry, the prose 
fiction, and the general literature of Britain and of 
Europe — his veneration for the past, and his intense 
and yet catholic Scotticism. I am not here to ven- 
ture on so extensive a task as an analysis of Scott's 
genius all in all, so as to see what he had in common 
with other men of the same literary order and in 
what he differed from them ; but I think you will 
agree that, when I name these two qualities — his 
passion for the antique and his Scotticism — I name 
the two qualities which stood out so prominently in 
his character as to affect all the others and determine 
them in operation. 

Veneration for the past, delight in the antique — 
this is pre-eminently the disposition of the Historian. 
The faculty of the Philosopher is Reason, the specu- 
lative faculty, which does not neglect the phenomena 
of the past, but works also in the present with a 
view to the future ; the faculty of the Poet is Imagi- 
nation, which need not expatiate in the past, except 
when it voluntarily chooses that particular field as 
footing for its ideal inventions; but the faculty of 
the Historian is Memory, whose very domain is the 



HIS LOVE OF THE PAST. 165 

past. True, there are historians of different types — 
some, as Herodotus, in whom the love of the past 
seems almost pure and motiveless, a kind of ultimate 
unreasoning feeling, happy in its own exercise ; and 
others, as Thucydides, in whose narratives of past 
transactions there is more of the critical, or philoso- 
phical, or practical, or didactic spirit. True, also, it 
may be questioned whether — seeing that an exact 
and complete knowledge of the past, and especially 
of the distant past, is impossible, and it is always 
only the past as perceived and shaped by his own 
spirit, and as represented by his own present mode 
of thinking, that any historian can give us — that 
which is valuable and permanent in any history is 
not more the meaning than the materials ; in other 
words, either the poetic significance with which the 
materials are invested by a mind seeing them in that 
haze which already generalises them for the imagina- 
tion and blots out the particular, or the philosophic 
bearing on universal life which the mind can the 
more easily detect in them for a similar reason. 
Still, it remains true that the pure love of the past — 
the habit of incessantly remembering, instead of 
incessantly imagining or reasoning — is the charac- 
teristic of the historian as such ; and that the differ- 
ences among historians arise in part from the varying 



166 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

strength of this characteristic,, whether it is the 
poetical tendency or the philosophical tendency that 
goes along with it. In Scott the degree of this 
characteristic was enormous. He blended the poet 
with the historian, and the form of most of his works 
was poetical rather than professedly historical ; 
but he frequently adopted the historical form, too ; 
and there is scarcely a fragment of his poetry that 
has not history for its matter. There were other 
poets of his age, excelling him, some in one respect 
and some in another ; but he beat them all in the 
article of history, and in all that the passion for 
history, and a head and heart full of history could 
give to a modern poet. In the sheer delight 
in the past, and the passion for gathering its 
reminiscences, he was as inordinately endowed as 
Herodotus ; in whom, however, there was less of the 
poet in addition. Herodotus was a man, if we may so 
say, who walked round half the margin of the ancient 
Mediterranean, observing its monuments, collecting 
its legends, and painting its manners, so as to con- 
dense into one book all the wrecks of tradition and 
of fact which time had rolled down, in that the 
then colonised portion of the world, from the begin- 
ning of things to his own day. Scott was a man 
who, in virtue of a similar constitutional tendency 



HIS LOVE OF THE PAST. 167 

which he had educated from his boyhood, did the 
same for a limited portion of time over a limited 
portion of the much more extensively peopled and 
much more completely organised world of his day — 
Gothic Europe, from the tenth century or thereby 
onwards. 

This limitation of Scott's love of the antique to a 
particular region geographically and a particular era 
chronologically, is worthy of notice. He does not go 
round and round the world (as who could in that 
fashion ?) ; his themes are not even oriental, except 
when Gothic adventure, as in the crusades, takes him 
to the East. Gothic Europe is his range. Then, 
again, it is to the centuries that constitute the Gothic 
era of European history, and, preferably, to the last 
of these, after the rise of the feudal system out of 
the earlier mediaeval chaos, that he confines his 
imaginative wanderings. He does not go back to 
classical times. It is as if, starting from the full 
light of his own days, and going back century after 
century — through the eighteenth to the seventeenth, 
and thence to the sixteenth, thence to the fifteenth, 
and so on — he had, in all, a range of about eight 
centuries through which he roamed, as in his proper 
domain, more attached to certain portions even of 
these than to others ; and as if, the moment he had 



168 SCOTT AND HIS I NFL UENCE. 

penetrated far enough back to see the light of the 
anterior classical ages breaking through the gloom, 
then invariably he turned his steps, as feeling that, 
where there was Greek and Roman light, he had no 
interest in going, and he was at home only in the 
Gothic forest. With the exception of a back-refer- 
ence now and then as far as the supposed days of 
King Arthur and of the British Druids, his oldest 
express theme, if I remember aright, is the wars of 
the Moors and the Goths in Spain. Scott's venera- 
tion for the past, then, was not a veneration for the 
whole past, but for the Gothic portion of it ; and in 
this he differed from other men who have possessed 
in strong degree the same general affection for history. 
Niebuhr, for example, delighted in the classical past ; 
there have been others whose tastes led them to 
Hellenic scenes and subjects rather than to Gothic 
and modern ; and I do not believe that Scott felt 
half the enthusiasm for Caesar that Shakespeare dicL 
Those who have the affection for the past (and most 
poets have had it more or less) might, indeed, bo 
subdivided farther, and in a somewhat interesting 
manner, according to the portion of the past which 
is observed most strongly to possess their affections* 
As Scott was preternaturally endowed with the- 
affection as regards degree, so I believe that the 



HIS SCOTTICISM. 169 

portion of the past on which he fastened was as 
extensive as so strong an affection could well apply 
itself to, and also that it was the most important for 
all modern purposes. Whether he did really under- 
stand the Gothic ages over which he roamed, whether 
his representations of feudal and mediaeval facts, 
beliefs, costumes, and manners were really authentic 
and accurate, or whether and to what extent they 
were but fictitious makeshifts, which he partly 
knew to be such, is a question which may be 
reserved. 

But Scott's veneration for the past reached its 
highest and most shrewd and intelligent form in his 
Scotticism. It is a coincidence with more than the 
usual amount of verbal good luck in it that his name 
should have been Scott — generically and comprehen- 
sively the Scotchman. In all Scotchmen, indeed, 
even the most philosophic and most cosmopolitan 
that the little land has produced, there has been 
found, it is believed, something of this Scotticism — 
this loving regard for the " land of brown heath and 
shaggy wood/'' and knowledge of its traditions, and 
sympathy, more or less hearty, with its habits, its 
prejudices, and its humours. Part of every Scotch- 
man's outfit in life is, or used to be, his Scotticism, 
however much he might choose to disguise it or make 



170 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

light of it. Nay, not a few of the most eminent 
literary Scotchmen before Sir Walter, had exhibited 
their Scotticism openly, ostentatiously, and with 
almost plaguy loudness, and had proclaimed it, 
through good report and through bad report, as a 
conscious element in their genius. So it was, as we 
have seen, with Smollett; and so, in still larger 
proportion, it had been with Burns : — 

" Even then a wish, I mind its power — 
A wish, that to my latest hour 

Shall strongly heave my breast — 
That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, 
Some usefu' plan or beuk could make, 

Or sing a sang at least. 
The rough bur-thistle, spreading wide 

Amang the bearded bear, 
I turned the weeder-clips aside, 
And spared the symbol dear. 
No nation, no station 

My envy e'er could raise ; 
A Scot still, but blot still, 

I knew nae higher praise ! " 

All this feeling Scott, too, had from his child- 
hood ; and in his earliest readings in his boyhood and 
youth he had nursed and fostered it — still turning 
and returning from his miscellaneous readings in the 
universal literature of European romance and history 
back with especial fondness to the legends and the 
history of his native land. Moreover, inasmuch as 



HIS SCOTTICISM. 171 

he was a native of Edinburgh, it might be possible to 
show that his Scotticism was necessarily of a more 
central, and, as we may say, more metropolitan kind 
than the Scotticism of either Smollett or Burns. 
In his early familiarity with Edinburgh both physi- 
cally and socially, and in his wanderings about its 
environs, he had acquired, in wonderfully strong 
degree, that affection for it, that actual magnetic or 
nervous connexion with it, which we have already 
described. Who does not remember the burst in 
." Marmion," when Edinburgh is seen from the 
Braids ? 

" Still on the spot Lord Marmion stay'd, 
For fairer scene he ne'er surveyed. 

When sated with the martial show 

That peopled all the plain below, 

The wandering eye could o'er it go, 

And mark the distant city glow, 
With gloomy splendour red ; 

For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow, 

That round the sable turrets flow, 
The morning beams were shed, 

And tinged them with a lustre proud, 

Like that which streaks a thunder-cloud. 
Such dusky grandeur clothed the height 
Where the huge castle holds its state, 

And all the steep slope adown, 
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky, 
Piled deep and massy, close and high, 

Mine own romantic town." 



172 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

But even in this outburst dedicated to his " own 
romantic town," his fancy passes instinctively to the 
whole land of which it is the capital. He makes 
Marmion and his companions glance beyond the city, 
far north to the Ochil mountains, to Fife and the 
Firth, to Preston-Bay and Berwick-Law ; and then, 
in the next line, this limited scene stands as a repre- 
sentation of all Scotland : — 

" Fitz-Eustace' heart felt closely pent ; 

As if to give his rapture vent, 

The spur he to his charger lent, 
, And raised his bridle hand ; 

And, making demivolte in air, 

Cried, 'Where's the coward that would not dare 
To fight for such a land ? ' " 

As this general regard for all Scotland might be 
expected more particularly of a metropolitan Scot, 
so the poet had increased and cultivated it by his 
more than usual amount of travel and residence in 
those days in different parts of Scotland. Tweedside 
and the Border were soon familiar to him and dear 
to him as the region of his ancestors ; he knew the 
West ; he had gone far up the east coast, and ulti- 
mately he got as far as the Orkneys ; and, at a time 
when the Highlands were much less pervious than 
they now are to Lowland tourists, he had lived in 



HIS SCOTTICISM. 173 

them for months together, surrounded by tartan and 
Gaelic, and yet quite at home. It was not only with 
the scenery of his country that he was acquainted. 
Being himself one of the shrewdest, most kindly, 
and most sociable of men, and " having had from his 
infancy," as he says, "free and unrestrained com- 
" munication with all ranks of his countrymen, from 
" the Scottish peer to the Scottish ploughman," 
he knew their ways, their dialect, their modes of 
thought, their humours, as intimately as any Scotch- 
man breathing. His profession as a lawyer, and his 
official position as a sheriff, added even a technical 
knowledge of Scottish institutions ; and the age in 
which he lived was one in which it was possible for 
a retentive memory, like his, to store up reports and 
relics at first hand of a wilder state of Scottish 
society which had passed away — recollections, both 
Highland and Lowland, reaching back to the 
Jacobite Rebellions and even farther. All in all, his 
Scotticism was full, extensive, and thorough. In 
combination with his love of the past, it took, for the 
ordinary purposes of public citizenship, the form of 
Scottish Toryism j but in the larger field of literature 
its outcome was such as to thrill and please the 
world. 

As all know, it was not till Scott's mature life, and 



174 SCOTT AND HIS I NFL UENCE. 

when he had already long been known as one of the 
first British poets and miscellaneous prose-writers 
of his time, that he turned into the track of prose 
fiction. From 1796 to 1805, or from his twenty-sixth 
to his thirty-fifth year, his literary occupations were 
in desultory translations from the German, and in 
collecting and editing Scottish ballads and romances; 
then, from his thirty-fifth year to his forty- fourth, 
came the period of his original metrical romances ; 
and it was not till 1814, when the "Lay of the Last 
Minstrel " and " Marmion " and the " Lady of the 
Lake " had gone over the world in thousands, and 
people were detecting a falling off in the poems by 
which these had been succeeded, that he resolved to 
carry his love of the antique and his Scotticism out 
of that metrical style the power of which was wan- 
ing, and made his first anonymous venture as a 
novelist in Waverley. Here, therefore, it is neces- 
sary that we should take a retrospective view of the 
course of British novel-writing from the point at 
which we left it in our last lecture, namely at or 
about the year 1789, on to this year 1814, when the 
author of Waverley burst on the novel-reading public 
like a meteor among the smaller stars. The interval 
is exactly a quarter of a century. 



HIS IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS. 175 

After Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, 
Goldsmith, Walpole, and other writers belonging 
to the early part of the reign of George III., the 
respectability of the British novel was kept up, as 
we saw, though its resources were hardly extended, 
by such writers as Mackenzie, Miss Eeeve, Miss 
Burney, Beckford, Cumberland, Robert Bage, and 
Dr. John Moore. Besides these respectable writers, 
there were scores of others engaged in producing 
trashy tales to supply the growing appetite for 
works of fiction which the older novelists had 
created. This was the age of the beginning of the 
so-called " Minerva-Press Novels," which continued 
to be poured forth in superabundance till Scott took 
the field. About the year 1789, however, we find, 
as might be expected, novelists of a better class 
making their appearance. 

That year, as all know, is a great epoch in modern 
European history. It was the year of the French 
Revolution, when, through blood and war and 
universal agitation, the various countries of Europe 
passed out of that system of things which had sub- 
sisted during the eighteenth century, and entered 
on a new period of life — the period to which we now 
belong. For most purposes, the year 1789, and not 
the year 1800, is to be considered as the proper close 



176 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

of the " Eighteenth Century." This is seen best in 
the history of literature. Take the history of British 
Literature for example. It is now an established 
practice among us to date the commencement of a 
new era in British literary history — the era in which, 
we still are — from the year 1789, there or there- 
abouts. As a new social spirit then comes in — a 
spirit superseding the old Whiggism and Toryism 
of the eighteenth century, or, at least, giving a new 
significance to these terms by reconnecting them 
with first principles — so there then comes in also a 
new intellectual spirit. It is seen working in all 
the forms of our literature. Our philosophy begins 
to deepen itself, affected partly by the deeper social 
questions which the French. Revolution had forced 
on the attention of mankind, partly by the quie.t 
diffusion among us, through such interpreters as 
Coleridge, of ideas taken from the rising philosophy 
of Germany. Our historical literature also takes on 
a different hue, and begins to be characterised, on 
the one hand, by more of that spirit of political 
innovation and aspiration after progress which 
belonged to the revolutionary epoch, and on the 
other, by a kind of reactionary regard for that past 
which the revolution misrepresented and maligned. 
But, above all, the change was visible in our poetry. 



IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS. 177 

In all our literary histories you will find the epoch 
of the French Revolution marked as the epoch of an 
interesting revival of natural British Poetry, after 
that interregnum of more artificial Poetry which had 
begun in Dryden. It is about this time that the 
simultaneous publications of Burns and Cowper, of 
Crabbe and Bowles, herald in the change of poetic 
style and matter which was consummated by Words- 
worth. An attention rather to the permanent and 
invariable facts of life than to the changing aspects 
of human manners, a deeper reverence for nature, 
and a closer study of all natural appearances, a 
greater ideality of tone, and yet a return to truth 
and simplicity of diction — such, variously phrased, 
were the qualities on which, as Wordsworth alleged, 
the revival depended. 

So far as the change was fundamental, it must 
have affected also our Prose Fiction. To some 
extent we find that it did so. I can here, however, 
be but brief in my indications. 

In the interval between 1789 and 1814 I count 
twenty novelists of sufficient mark to be remembered 
individually in the history of British Prose Litera- 
ture. Two of these are Robert Bage and Dr. John 
Moore, who had begun their career as novelists 
prior to 1789 ; the others, named as nearly as pos- 
N 



178 



SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 



sible in the order of their appearance, are — Thomas 
Holcroft, Mrs. Charlotte Smith, Sophia and Harriet 
Lee, Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. Radcliffe, Matthew Gre- 
gory Lewis, Mrs. Opie, "William Godwin, Anna 
Maria Porter and Jane Porter, Miss Edgeworth, 
Miss Jane Austen, Mrs. Brunton, Mrs. Hamilton, 
Hannah More, Miss Owenson (afterwards Lady 
Morgan), and the Rev. Charles Maturin. I must 
depend very much on your own associations with 
these names for the impressions you are likely to 
take, along with me, as to the nature of the change 
or changes in British novel-writing which they 
represent as having occurred in the quarter of a 
century now under notice; but I may call your 
attention to one or two facts. 

And, first, it is worth observing that no fewer 
than fourteen out of the twenty novelists that have 
been named were women. No fact of this kind is 
accidental; and an investigation concerning the 
causes of it might not be without results. Probably 
reasons for it might be found in the state of British 
society at that period, as affected by the general con- 
dition of Europe, and as leading to a somewhat new 
adjustment of the various kinds of intellectual occu- 
pation between the sexes — men let us say (and 
this is statistically the fact) transferring themselves 



LADY-NO VE LISTS. 179 

to other kinds of literature, including metrical 
Poetry, and retaining the ascendancy there ; while 
women took possession of the Novel. Be the causes 
of the fact, however, what they may, the fact itself 
is interesting. If the Novel or Prose Fiction was 
the first fortress in the territory of literature which 
the women seized — nay, if they seized it all the 
the more easily because the men, being absent else- 
where, had left it weakly garrisoned — it cannot be 
denied, at all events, that they manned it well. Not 
only were the women in the majority, but they also 
did the duty of the garrison better than the men 
who had been left in it. With the exception of 
Godwin, I do not know that any of the male 
novelists I have mentioned could be put in com- 
parison, in respect of genuine merit, with such 
novelists of the other sex as Mrs. Eadcliffe, Miss 
Edgeworth, and Miss Austen. Out of this fact, 
taken along with the fact that from that time to 
this there has been an uninterrupted succession of 
lady-novelists, and also with the fact that, though 
the Novel was the first fortress into which the sex 
were admitted in any number, they have since found 
their way into other fortresses of the literary 
domain, not excepting Poetry, nor even History, 
and have done excellent duty there too — out of these 
n2 



180 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

facts, I say, may we not derive a prognostication? 
May there not be still farther room in the realm of 
intellectual activity for the genius of women ; may 
they not yet be in all the garrisons ? For my part 
I know not a more unmanly outcry than that in 
fashion against "strong-minded women." Either 
the phrase is an irony which repetition has turned 
into a serious fallacy, and what is meant is, that the 
so called "strong-minded women" are not strong- 
minded, and that analogous specimens of men would 
be regarded as weak-minded ; or the phrase is cruel 
and mean. No woman yet but was better, nobler, 
ay, and essentially more womanly in precise propor- 
tion as her natural abilities had received all the 
education of which they were capable! No man 
really but thinks so and finds it so — at least, no man 
worth his beard ! As to what may be the inherent 
difference of intellectual and social function involved 
in the fact of sex, we need not trouble ourselves so 
very much. Whatever the difference is, nature will 
take ample care of it, and it will be all the better 
pronounced the less its manifestation is impeded. 
It is obvious that we have already gained much by 
the representation which women have been able 
to make of their peculiar dispositions and modes 
of perception in the portion of the field of litera- 



NATIONALITY IN NOVELS, 181 

ture which they have already occupied. Perhaps 
there was a special propriety in their selecting the 
Prose Fiction as the form of literature in which 
first to express themselves — the capabilities of that 
form of literature being such that we can conceive 
women conveying most easily through it those views 
and perceptions which, by presupposition, they were 
best qualified to contribute. 

Another statistical fact connected with the list of 
novelists which I have given, is that, out of the entire 
twenty, twelve were of English, six of Irish, and only 
two of Scottish birth. This proportion suggests, 
with tolerable accuracy, certain easily-conceived dif- 
ferences as regards the themes chosen by the no- 
velists, and their modes of treating them. To some 
extent, all of them took general British themes, or 
continental themes, or themes of general poetic in- 
terest ; but we note also a certain affection in some 
of them for the representation of peculiarly national 
manners and circumstances ; and, as might be ex- 
pected, where this is the case, the affection follows 
the accident of birth. Thus Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. 
Opie, and Miss Austen are novelists of English so- 
ciety and English manners ; Miss Edgeworth, in not 
a few of her tales, constitutes herself, of express pur- 
pose, a painter and critic of Irish manners and Irish 



182 SCO TT A ND HIS 1NFL UENCE. 

society ; and in Moore we have a characteristic dash 
of Scotticism. So far as there is an exception to 
what the statistical proportion just stated might 
suggest, it is in favour of Scotland. One or two of 
the English and Irish novelists took a fancy for 
Scottish subjects. The two Miss Porters, though of 
Irish birth, had resided long in Edinburgh ; and 
from the younger of them Scottish boys have received 
that prime favourite of theirs, " The Scottish Chiefs" 
— a romance in which, as the boysfind out when they 
grow older, it is not exactly the historical Wallace 
or the Wallace of Blind Henry that is the hero, 
but a highly modernized Wallace, tremulous with 
the most exquisite sentiments, and carrying in his 
hand, as the saviour of Scotland, alternately a sword 
and a white cambric handkerchiefA Mrs. Hamilton 
also, though born in Ireland, was of Scottish extrac- 
tion, and was educated in Scotland ; and her " Cot- 
tagers of G-lenburnie w is a genuine Scottish story. 
And Mrs. Radcliffe's first romance was laid in Scot- 
tish feudal times. 

Passing to the novels themselves, can we classify 
them into kinds ? Can we discern in them any 
definite tendencies of the British novel-writing of the 
period different from those which existed before ? 
As far as my recollected acquaintance with speci- 



RE VOL UTIONARY NO VELS : GOD WIN. 183 

mens of the novels themselves entitles me to judge, 
I think that we can. The novels of the writers I 
have named may, I think, be grouped into three 
classes, each representing a tendency of the British 
prose-fiction of the period. 

(1.) Perhaps the most characteristic tendency of 
British novel-writing, immediately or soon after the 
year 1789, was to the embodiment in fiction of those 
social speculations and aspirations which had sprung 
out of the French Revolution as observed from these 
islands. I need not tell you how powerfully all 
thoughtful minds in this country were then stirred 
by the tremendous events abroad — how, on the one 
hand, a veteran Burke was struck aghast and all 
but abjured his Whiggism, because it seemed as if 
a legion of fiends had come into alliance with it ; 
and how, on the other, ardent young souls, such as 
Wordsworth and Coleridge and Southey, leaped 
with enthusiasm and saw the age of gold. Liberty, 
equality, fraternity; human progress and perfecti- 
bility; the iniquity of existing institutions — with 
these and such notions were many minds filled. They 
broke out in various forms — in poems and in works 
of prose-fiction, as well as in pamphlets and doc- 
trinal treatises. In prose fiction Bage and Holcroft 
were representatives of the roused democratic spirit ; 



184 SCO TT A ND HIS I NFL UENCE. 

but its greatest representative by far was William 
Godwin. It was in 1794 that this remarkable man — 
already well known as a political writer, and destined 
to a long life of farther literary activity — published 
his novel entitled Caleb Williams ; or, Things as they 
are. It was intended to be, as he said in his preface, 
" a study and delineation of things passing in the moral 
world," a poetical exposition of the vices and mal- 
arrangements of existing society, li a general review 
of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism 
by which man becomes the destroyer of man." 
Those of you who remember the novel — the tale 
which it tells of the sufferings of the noble-minded 
and wealthy Falkland, who lives on with the con- 
sciousness of having committed a murder for which 
two innocent men have been hanged, and of the suf- 
ferings which, in self-preservation, he inflicts on the 
youth, Caleb Williams, his secretary, who has come 
into possession of the fatal secret — will judge of the 
truth of this description. In Godwin's later novels 
the spirit and purpose are the same, with variations 
in the circumstance. The action of society upon 
character, or, as one of his critics says, " Man the 
enemy of man " — such is his constant text. 

" Amid the woods the tiger knows his kind; 
The panther preys not on the panther brood ; 
Man only is the common foe of man." 



GOTHIC ROMANCE; MRS. EALCLIFFE. 185 

As Godwin's, however, was no vulgar intellect, and 
as his politics were of an ardent and speculative 
cast, so, even now, when his novels are read for their 
purely imaginative interest, they impress powerfully. 
(2.) As distinct from the kind of novel which 
Godwin represented, we have, in the list under view, 
various specimens of what may be called the Gothic 
romance of the picturesque and the terrible. The 
beginnings of this kind of novel have been referred 
to WaJpole, in his Castle of Otranto, and to his 
imitator, Miss Keeve, in her Old English Baron ; 
but it attained its full development in the present 
period, in the fictions of Mrs. Radcliffe, Matthew 
Gregory Lewis, and, I believe, also in those of Ma- 
turin, and in some of those of the Miss Porters and of 
Harriet Lee. In so far as the tendency to this kind 
of fiction involved a romantic veneration for the past, 
it may be regarded as a reaction against the revo- 
lutionary spirit of the time, as embodied in Godwin 
and others. But it would be too superficial a view 
of the nature of the tendency to suppose that it ori- 
ginated merely in any such reaction, conscious or 
unconscious. Godwin himself goes back, in some of 
his novels, to feudal times, and is not destitute of 
power of imagination in old Gothic circumstance. 
We see, indeed, that the great literary controversy 



186 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

between Classicism and Romanticism was a direct 
resnlt of the French Revolution. In that crisis the 
Gothic depths of the western European mind were 
broken into ; and though, politically, the immediate 
effect was a disgust of the past and a longing towards 
the future as the era of human emancipation, yet, 
intellectually, the effect was a contempt for classic 
modes of fancy and composition, and a letting loose 
of the imagination upon Nature in her wildest and 
grandest recesses, and upon whatever in human his- 
tory could supply aught in affinity with the furious 
workings of contemporary passion. The Gothic 
Romance of the picturesque and the ghastly afforded 
the necessary conditions. Gloomy Gothic castles in 
wild valleys, with forests clothing the neighbouring 
hills ; lawless banditti hovering round ; the moon 
bowling fearfully through clouds over inland scenes 
of horror, or illuminating with its full blue light 
Italian bays and fated spots on their promontories ; 
monks, tyrannical chieftains, and inquisitors ; shrieks 
in the night, supernatural noises, the tolling of the 
bell, the heavy footstep in the corridor ; — " Hark ! it 
approaches ; save me, save me ; " — at that instant, 
the flash of lightning through the Gothic window ; 
the door dashed open ; the unnameable apparition ; 
the roar of the simultaneous thunder ; " Ye powers 



NOVEL OF MANNERS: MISS AUSTEN. 187 

of Hell ! " — No, Heaven has its messengers too ; the 
voice cries, "Forbear;" she's saved, she's saved! 
Of all the practitioners of this style of art, need I 
say that Mrs. Radcliffe is the chief? She has been 
called the Salvator Rosa of British prose fiction ; 
and, in reference to her Sicilian Romance, her Ro- 
mance of the Forest, her Mysteries of Udolpho, and 
her Italian, Sir Walter Scott has but done her justice 
when he says : " Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, and 
" even Walpole, though writing upon imaginative 
" subjects, are decidedly prose authors ; but Mrs. 
" Radcliffe has a title to be considered the first 
"poetess of romantic fiction — that is, if actual 
" rhythm shall not be deemed essential to poetry." 
Mrs. RadclifiVs romances are, indeed, of a wholly 
fantastic kind of Gothic, with no whit of foundation 
in actual knowledge of mediaeval history. Her charac- 
ters are but vague melodramatic phantoms that flit 
through her descriptions of scenery, and serve as 
agents for her terrific situations. There is something 
like treachery also to the true theory of her style 
in her habit of always solving the mystery at the 
end by purely natural explanations. Monk Lewis 
and others of the school were more daring in this 
respect. 

(3.) The majority of the novelists of our list, how- 



J 88 - SCOTT AND EIS INFLUENCE. 

ever, were, as their predecessors of the eighteenth 
century had been, mere painters of life and manners, 
with more or less of humour and more or less of 
ethical purpose. Moore, the two Miss Lees, Mrs. 
Inchbald, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Opie, Miss Edgeworth, 
Mrs. Brunton, Mrs. Hamilton, Hannah More, Miss 
Owenson — all of them lady-novelists, except one — 
continued this style of fiction. The differences in 
their novels, as compared with previous novels of life 
and manners, must be considered as arising, in part, 
from the actual differences of the life and manners 
that were to be painted, but in part, also, from a dif- 
ference in the method of description — which last 
may be resolved into the fact, already noted, that 
women were now taking their turn as describers, 
and bringing their peculiar tact of perception, and 
their peculiar notions of the right and the tasteful, 
to the task of representing much in society that had 
been omitted before, and especially the ways of their 
own sex. Among these lady-novelists, Miss Edge- 
worth and Miss Austen were, undoubtedly, the first 
in talent. So far as they remind us of previous 
novelists of the other sex, it is most, as might be 
expected, of Richardson ; but, while resembling him 
in minuteness of observation, in good sense, and 
in clear moral aim, they present many differences. 



SCOTT S TENDENCIES. 189 

All in all, as far as my information goes, the best 
judges unanimously prefer Miss Austen to any of ber 
contemporaries of tbe same order. Tbey reckon ber 
Sense and Sensibility, her Pride and Prejudice, ber 
Mansfield Park and ber Emma (which novels were 
published in her life-time), and also her Northanger 
Abbey and her Persuasion (which were published 
posthumously) as not only better than anything else 
of the kind written in her day, but also among the 
most perfect and charming fictions in the language. 
I have known the most hard-headed men in ecstasies 
with them ; and the only objection I have heard of 
as brought against them by ladies is, that they reveal 
too many of their secrets. 

We return to Scott. In virtue both of his consti- 
tution and of his education, Scott, if he had betaken 
himself to prose fiction at first, instead of deferring 
his exercises in it to his mature age, would have had 
his connexions, in the main, with the two last-named 
schools of British novel-writing at the close of the 
last and the beginning of the present century. He 
would have stood apart from Godwin and his class 
of political and speculative novelists, or would have 
even proclaimed himself their antagonist; and he 
would have taken rank both among the romance- 



190 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

writers of the Gothic picturesque and among the 
painters of contemporary life and manners — a chief 
among both by reason of the general superiority of 
his genius, and producing among both those peculiar 
effects which would have resulted from his passion 
for the real in History, from his extensive antiqua- 
rian knowledge, and from his Scotticism. We have 
his own authority for this statement. He tell us 
that, as early as 1799 or 1800, before he had appeared 
conspicuously as a poet, he had meditated the com- 
position of a prose tale of chivalry, after the example 
of Walpole's " Castle of Otranto," but on a Scottish 
subject, and with " plenty of Border characters and 
supernatural incident." He had actually written 
some pages of such a romance, to be entitled "Thomas 
the Rhymer/' when circumstances changed his in- 
tention. He did not, however, abandon the idea of 
a Scottish prose romance; in 1805 he wrote a por- 
tion of Waverley / and, though that, too, was thrown 
aside, the impression made upon him by Miss Edge- 
worth's Irish tales was such as to convince him 
that, when he had leisure, he should be able to do 
something in a similar style, for the representation 
of Scottish manners. The leisure came in 1814, 
when Waverley was completed and published. Between 
that date and his death in 1832 he gave to the world, 



WA VERLE Y NO VELS CLASSIFIED. 191 

besides much else, the rest of the series of the 
Waverley Novels. 

If we omit one or two tales now included in the 
series, but not originally published in it, the Waver- 
ley Novels are twenty-nine in number. Of these 
twenty-nine novels, unless I err in my recollection 
of their contents, 12 belong to the eighteenth 
century, whether to the earlier or to the later part 
of it — namely, Waverley, Guy Mannering, The Anti- 
quary, Rob Roy, The Black Dwarf, The Heart of 
Mid-Lothian, The Bride of Lammermoor , St. Ronan's 
Well, Redgauntlet, The Highland Widow, The Two 
Drovers, and The Surgeon's Daughter; 6 belong to 
the seventeenth century — namely, Old Mortality, 
The Legend of Montrose, The Pirate, Woodstock, 
The Fortunes of Nigel, and Peveril of the Peak; 3 to 
the sixteenth — namely, The Monastery, The Abbot, 
and Kenilworth ; 3 to the fifteenth — namely, Quen- 
tin Durward, The Fair Maid of Perth, and Anne of 
Geierstein; 1 to the fourteenth — namely, Castle 
Dangerous ; and the remaining 4 to other centuries 
as far back as the end of the eleventh — namely, 
Ivanhoe, The Betrothed, The Talisman, and Count 
Robert of Paris. Thus it appears that, though Scott 
did not hesitate to throw an occasional novel pretty 
far back into feudal and Gothic times, he preferred, 



192 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

on the whole, ground nearer to his own age, where 
he could blend the interest of romantic adventure 
with that of homely and humorous representation 
of manners. Take another numerical classification 
of the novels on a different principle. Out of the 
whole twenty-nine, no fewer than 19, as I calculate, 
have their scenes laid wholly, or in great part, in 
Scotland, and are almost throughout novels of 
Scottish circumstance; 5 have their scenes laid in 
England — one of which, however, The Fortunes of 
Nigel, has much of Scottish circumstance in it; 
2 have their scenes on the Continent — one of which, 
however, Quentin Durward, has a Scotchman for its 
hero ; and 3 are Oriental in their ground and refer- 
ence — of which one also, The Talisman, is dedicated 
to the adventures of a Scotchman. Thus, as regards 
place, it appears that Scott kept by preference near 
home, and that, but for some six or seven novels 
spared for purely English or for more remote themes, 
the name of " The Scottish Novels" might be applied 
with accuracy to the entire series. Combining the 
two classifications, and taking note of the order in 
which the novels were published, we can farther see, 
very distinctly, that Scott began with those which 
were Scottish in their subjects and lay nearest his 
own age, and that, only after he had pretty well 



TEE W AVE RLE Y NOVELS. 193 

exhausted that ground and that time, did he work 
far backwards chronologically and away from Scot- 
land geographically. Ivanhoe, which was his first 
novel not Scottish in subject, and also the first 
thrown farther back in time than the seventeenth 
century, was the tenth novel of the series in the 
order of composition. 

You do not expect me, I am sure, to criticise the 
Waverley novels. We all know them and we all 
enjoy them. There has been a deluge of British 
novels since they were written — many of them most 
rich and striking, and some of them presenting 
subtle characteristics which we do not seek in the 
Waverley novels, and which recommend them in an 
express manner to recent tastes ; but when we are 
fatigued after a hard day's work and want a book in 
the evening, do we not, all of us, find it answer our 
purpose to fall back on a Waverley novel? At such 
times do we not run over the series mentally or on 
the bookshelf to see which of the novels it is that lies 
farthest off in our recollection ; and, even should 
that chance to be the poorest of the set, do we not 
find it, after all, very pleasant reading ? And, in this 
way, do we not systematically recover one after 
another of the series, just as it is slipping over the 
horizon of our memory, and retain all in permanent 





194 SCOTT AND HIS INFL UEXCE. 

possession ? And, when we think how many can use 
the books in this way — that it is not the rich or the 
learned only that can thus wile away an hour of 
fatigue over these volumes, but that to myriads of 
the poor and laborious wherever our language is 
spoken, and, through translation, farther still, they 
serve the same refreshing function, as being so simple 
in matter and of such general interest, that the un- 
learned as well as the learned can understand them, 
and, at the same time, so pure and healthy in the main 
that no mind can take harm from them — have we not, 
in this thought, some measure of the gratitude which, 
if only on the score of innocent amusement, the world 
owes to Scott? He was a modest, hearty man, with 
as little of the cant of authorship about him as any 
author that ever lived ; he even detested that cant, 
talked as little of books as any man, and was a living 
rebuke to that miserable pedantry of our book- 
making days which thinks and acts as if books were 
the only things of interest in the world, as if the 
earth were mere standing ground for writers and 
printers, the sea ink, and the sky parchment ; and 
hence, when he spoke of his own novels, or of prose 
fiction in general, it was enough for him to think 
that the means of innocent amusement were thereby 
increased, and that men, in the midst of their 



THE W AVE RLE Y NOVELS. 195 

business, might thereby have their minds a little 
lightened, and their hearts stirred by cheerful fancies. 
In attaining this, he attained more than he cared to 
mention as involved in it. It is the part of all poets 
and creative writers thus to make rich the thought 
of the world by additions to its stock^of well known 
fancies ; and when we think of the quantity of Scott's 
creative writing as well as of its popularity in kind — 
of the number of romantic stories he gave to the 
world and the plenitude of vivid incident in each, of 
the abundance in his novels of picturesque scenes 
and descriptions of nature, fit for the painter's art 
and actually employing it, and, above all, of the 
immense multitude of characters, real and fantastic, 
heroic and humorous, which his novels have added 
to that ideal population of beings bequeathed to the 
world by the poetic genius of the past, and hovering 
round us and overhead as airy agents and com- 
panions of existence — he evidently takes his place 
as, since Shakespeare, the man whose contribution 
of material to the hereditary British imagination has 
been the largest and the most various. Strikeout 
Scott, and all that has been accumulated on him by 
way of interest on his capital, from the British mind 
of the last seventy years, and how much poorer we 
should be ! His influence is more widely diffused 

02 



1 9 6 SCOTT A ND HIS INFL UENCE. 

through certain departments of European and Ameri- 
can literature than that of any individual writer that 
has recently lived ; and, many generations hence, 
the tinge of that influence will still be visible. 

It was no slight thing for the interests of British 
prose fiction, in relation to other established forms 
of our literature, that such a man as Scott, already 
laurelled as a metrical poet, and possessing besides 
a general reputation in the world of letters, should 
have devoted the last eighteen years of his life to 
activity in that particular field. Prose Fiction as- 
sumed, in consequence, a higher relative dignity ; 
nay Prose itself could be conscious of having ad- 
vanced its standard several stages nearer to the very 
citadel of Poesy. Apart, however, from the extension 
given by the Waverley novels to the prose form of 
fiction in the general realm of imaginative writing, 
we note several other influences which they had on 
the direction and aims of imaginative writing, whether 
in prose or in verse. For an exposition of one of 
these influences — the influence exerted by Scott's 
peculiar method of viewing and describing natural 
scenery upon our modern art of landscape, whether 
in literature or in painting — I may refer you to 
Mr. Ruskin, to whose observations on such a subject 
it is not for me to add anything. You will find in the 



THE HISTORICAL XO VEL. 197 

third volume of Mr. Buskin's "Modern Painters" 
ample illustrations of Scott's fine sense of the pic- 
turesque in natural scenery, and especially of that 
by which Mr. Ruskin sets so much store, his fond- 
ness for colour and sensitiveness to its effects; and 
you will there also find distinctions acutely ex- 
pounded between Scott's mode of viewing nature 
and Wordsworth's mode, and also between Scott's 
mode and that of Tennyson and other more recent 
poets. It remains for me, in concluding this lecture, 
to call your attention again to those two character- 
istics of Scott which we agreed to consider as the 
most prominently marked in his genius — his venera- 
tion for the past, or the tendency of his genius to 
the historical; and, as a special form of that, his 
Scotticism. Out of these characteristics, as might 
be expected, spring two of the most notable influences- 
which he has exerted on British prose fiction. 

And, first, by the historical character of his novels, 
he communicated a historical tendency to our litera- 
ture of fiction, which has not yet exhausted itself, 
and which has led to important results not ending 
in fiction only. Scott is the father of the Modern 
Historical Novel. There had been attempts at the 
thing before ; but he first established this form of 
writing among us. In virtue, however, of his own 



198 SC.0 TT A ND HIS I NFL UENCE. 

affection not so much for the whole of the historical 
past as for the Gothic portion of that past, from the 
tenth or eleventh century downwards, — that is for 
the ages of European chivalry and feudalism, and the 
times succeeding them, — he established the Historical 
Novel among us, so far as his own labours went, not 
in its entire capabilities, but only as applied to the 
range of the Gothic period, mediseval and modern. 
Scott is said to be the founder of the Novel of Chi- 
valry. Such a designation, however, though accurate 
so far, is not sufficiently extensive. By far the 
greater number of his novels, as we have seen, are 
not novels of the age of Chivalry, nor even of that of 
Feudalism, but refer to times subsequent to the 
Reformation, and, most of them, to the latter half of 
the seventeenth or to the eighteenth century. The 
phrase " Historical Novel " is, therefore, the more 
suitable; or, to be more precise still, "the Histo- 
rical Novel of the Gothic period in Europe." Those 
who have in their minds the proper signification of 
the words " Gothic period," as meaning the period 
of the leading activity of the so-called Gothic race in 
civilization, will understand what is here meant. 
There is no doubt that Scott did much to rouse an 
interest in this period of history, to settle our filial 
affections upon it as that whence we derive imme- 



SCOTT S MEDIEVALISM. . 199 

diately all that is in us and about us ; and also that 
he did much to interpret it to us, to make its habits, 
its costumes, its modes of life and action, more con- 
ceivable and intelligible. Even in such a matter as 
the revival among us of a taste for Gothic architec- 
ture and for mediaeval art generally, Scott's influence 
may be traced. 

Here, however, comes in a question which was 
reserved. Was Scott's wholesome influence in the 
matter of Gothicism and medievalism direct or in- 
direct ? Did he do the good he has done in this 
department by his own actual teachings, or only by 
setting a fashion which has led or may lead to more 
earnest inquiries and to more accurate teachings? 
Did Scott really understand the earlier feudal and 
chivalrous times which he represents in some of his 
novels ? Were his notions of those times authentic 
and true, or only fictitious makeshifts? Mr. Ruskin, 
with all his admiration for Scott, pronounces de- 
cidedly against him in this question. He says that 
Scott, though he " had some confused love of Gothic 
architecture, because it was dark, picturesque, old, 
and like nature," knew nothing really about it, and 
was wrong in all he thought he knew. He says 
further, that Scott's " romance and antiquarianism, 
his knighthood and monkery," are all false and were 



200 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

known by himself to be false. Baron Bunsen gives 
a similar opinion ; and, indeed, I know that the 
opinion is general among men whose judgment in 
such a matter is entitled to respect. I have heard 
a very good judge say that the German novel, " Si- 
donia the Sorcerer," is a deeper and truer delineation 
of mediaeval life than any of Scott's. For my own 
part, I cannot quite agree with this depreciation of 
Scott's medievalism and feudalism, or, at least, with 
the manner of it. I do not think that it was his 
antiquarian information that was in fault ; at least, 
in reading his Ivanhoe, or his Talisman, or his Quen- 
tin Durward, or his Fair Maid of Perth — in all of 
which he certainly flashes on the fancy in a manner 
that historians had not done before, and, with all 
their carping, have not found out the art of doing 
yet, a vivid condition of things intended to pass for 
medievalism and feudalism — I cannot find that our 
severest men of research have yet furnished us with 
that irrefragable and self-evidencing scheme or theory 
of Medievalism and Feudalism, by the test of which 
what Scott proffers as such is to fall so obviously 
into rubbish. Men, in hovering over a time, must 
fancy somewhat about it ; and a very vivid " some- 
what" will stand till accurate knowledge furnishes 
the imagination with the substitute. Scott's " some- 



SCOTT'S DEFECT. 201 

what" about Chivalry and Feudalism, besides that 
it will fade fast enough as we get a better, was not 
picked up at random, or without an amount of 
acquaintance with the materials that was in his time 
rather uncommon. 

What in Scott's Gothicism and Medievalism, is 
false arises, I believe, from a certain defect in his 
genius, which would have produced, and perhaps did 
produce, corresponding falsity in his imaginations out 
of the Gothic and mediaeval regions altogether — to 
wit, his deficiency in the purely speculative faculty. 
The only Scottish thing that Scott had not in him 
was Scotch metaphysics. His mind was not of the 
investigatiug, or philosophic, or speculative type ; he 
was ; not, in the distinctive sense of the term, a 
thinker. Craniologists see this defect, they tell us, 
in the very shape of his head — high above the ears, 
but not long from back to front. Whether the 
defect was in his head or in his thumbs, there it was, 
and it produced its consequences. It is in this most 
conspicuously that he falls short of Shakespeare. It 
is owing to this that, in so many of his more stately 
and ambitious characters — as when he tries to paint 
a Cromwell or a Raleigh, or a Queen Elizabeth, or 
a Louis the Eleventh, or an enthusiastic mediaeval 
monk — it seems as if he could but give a certain exte- 



202 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

rior account of the physiognomy, costume, arid 
gesture, but had no power to work from the inner 
mind outwards, so as to make the characters live. 
He cannot get at the mode of thinking of such 
personages ; indeed the notion of a u mode of think- 
ing" as belonging to persons, or to ages, and to be 
seized in representing them, was not very familiar to 
him. If he did not reproduce the earnest and 
powerful thought of the mediaeval period, its real 
feelings and beliefs, it was because his philosophy of 
the human mind and of human history was not so 
deep and subtle as to make feelings, beliefs, and 
modes of thought, the objects of his anxious imagi- 
nation. But, if he failed in representing a great and 
peculiar mind of the historical past, he would equally 
have failed, and for the same reason, in representing 
a great and peculiar mind of the historical present. 
This is a feat, indeed, to which I do not think we 
can boast that many of our writers of prose fiction 
have been, at any time, competent. 

The wonder is that Scott, notwithstanding his 
defect, succeeded so marvellously where he did suc- 
ceed. Need I say where that is ? Do we not feel that; 
in his representations of homely and even of striking; 
and heroic Scottish characters (with the exception, 
already implied, and accounted for, of his Presby- 



HIS SCOTTISH CHARACTERS. 203 

terians and Covenanters), in a period of Scottish 
society near to his own time —in his representations of 
Scottish life and Scottish humours, nay of Scottish 
beliefs and modes of thinking in the eighteenth and 
seventeenth centuries (repeat the exception, at least 
partially) or even farther back still, where his shrewd 
observations of present human nature could co-ope- 
rate with his antiquarian knowledge in filling out 
a social picture — he was simply "as successful as it was 
possible to be ? Are not his Davie Gellatlys, his 
Dandie Dinrnonts, his Counsellor Pleydells, his Old- 
bucks, his Saunders Mucklebackets, his Edie Ochil- 
trees, his Cuddie Headriggs, his Xicol James, his 
Caleb Balderstones, his Dugald Dalgettys, his Meg 
Doddses, and the like — nay, in a more tragic and 
elevated order, are not his Meg Merrilieses, his Rob 
Roys, his Red gauntlets, his Jeannie Deanses — as 
perfect creations as any in literature? These, and 
especially the homelier characters, are simply as well 
done as they could possibly be ; and, in their concep- 
tion and execution, I do not know that Scott is inferior 
to Shakespeare. Is it that in such cases his Scottish 
heart and his poetic instinct, acting on what he saw 
and knew, whirled him beyond his conscious power 
of speculation ; or is it that, after all, there was a 
speculative faculty in Scott which he had not worked ? 



204: SCOTT AND HIS INFL UENCE. 

From the shrewdness and sagacity of some of his 
critical prefaces to his novels, where he discusses 
principles of literature without seeming to call them 
such, I am sometimes tempted to believe the latter. 

And so, after all, Scott is greatest in his Scotti- 
cism. It is as a painter of Scottish nature and 
Scottish life, an interpreter of Scottish beliefs and 
Scottish feelings, a narrator of Scottish history, that 
he attains to the height of his genius. He has 
Scotticized European literature. He has interested 
the world in the little land. It had been heard of 
before ; it had given the world some reason to be 
interested in it before ; with, at no time, more than 
a million and a half of souls in it, it had spoken and 
acted with some emphasis in relation to the bigger 
nations around it. But, since Scott, the Thistle, till 
then a wayside weed, has had a great promotion in 
universal botany, and blooms, less prickly than of 
yore, but the identical Thistle still, in all the 
gardens of the world. All round the globe the little 
land is famous; tourists flock to it to admire its 
scenery, while they shoot its game ; and afar off, 
when the kilted regiments do British work, and the 
pibroch shrills them to the work they do, and men, 
marking what they do, ask whence they come, the 
answer is "From the land of Scott." 



SCOTTICISM. 205 

" Caledonia, stern and wild, 
Meet nurse for a poetic child ! " 

sang Scott long ago. Caledonia nursed him, and he 
has repaid the nursing. And this man was born 
amongst you ! This city gave him birth. All Scot- 
land claims him, but here he had his peculiar home. 
Nor was he ultimus Scotorum, nor the last of the 
men of Edinburgh. You have since had among 
you, born among you or naturalized among you 
from other parts of Scotland, other specimens of 
tbe national breed — Jeffrey, Chalmers, Wilson, 
Miller, Hamilton. Nature abhors duplicates; and 
though in all of these there was an element of 
characteristic Scotticism, and this was a source of 
their strength, all of them were men by themselves, 
powerful by reason of their independent mould and 
structure, and not one of them a repetition of Scott. 
This is as it should be. Scotticism is not one in- 
variable thing, fixed and intransmutable. It does 
not consist merely in vaunting and proclaiming 
itself, in working in Scottish facts, Scottish traditions, 
Scottish reminiscences — all of which has perhaps 
been done enough ; it may be driven inwards ; it 
may exist internally as a mode of thought ; and 
there may be efficient Scotticism where not one 
word is said of the Thistle, and where the language 



206 SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

and the activity are catholic and cosmopolitan. 
And, seeing that it is so, need we suppose that we 
have yet seen the last of the Scotchmen, the last of 
the men of Edinburgh ? No ! The drain may still 
be southwards; Scotland now subserves, politically 
at least, the higher unity of Great Britain, just as 
that unity in its turn subserves a larger unity still, 
not so obviously carved out in the body of the sur- 
rounding world; at the time when Scotland was 
united to her great neighbour, she was made par- 
taker of an intellectual accumulation and an inheri- 
tance of institutions, far richer, measured by the 
mode of extension, than she had to offer to that 
neighbour in return; and since that period, while 
much of the effort of Scotland has been in continua- 
tion of her own separate development, much has 
necessarily and justly been ruled by the law of her 
fortunate partnership. And so for the future, it 
may be the internal Scotticism, working on British 
or on still more general objects, and not the Scotti- 
cism that works only on Scottish objects of thought, 
that may be in demand in literature as well as in 
other walks. But while Scotland is true to herself, 
and while nature in her and her social conditions 
co-operate to impart to her sons such an education, 
as heretofore, there needs be no end to her race of 



YOUNG ED1NBUBGH. 207 

characteristic men, nor even to her home-grown and 
home-supported literature. And, if so of Scotland 
at large, so relatively of the city that is her centre. 
While the traditions of Edinburgh are not forgotten, 
nor her monuments destroyed, nor her beauties 
eradicated; while the Castle still frowns in the midst, 
and the Lion of Arthur's Seat still keeps guard, and 
the wooded Corstorphines lie soft on one side, 
and the Pentlands loom larger behind, and the 
same circle of objects surrounds the ravished sight 
by day, and at night the lamp-lit darkness of the 
city's own heights and hollows is one glittering pic- 
turesque, and far off Inchkeith light flashes and 
disappears, piercing this nocturnal picturesque in- 
termittingly, as with the gleam of a distant mystery ; 
so long, if but human will and industry answer as 
they ought, may this city keep up her intellectual 
succession. There are great ones gone, and nature 
abhors duplicates ; but 

" Other spirits there are, standing apart 
Upon the forehead of this town to come." 



208 



LECTURE IV. 

BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

The British Novelists since Scott are a very nume- 
rous body. Among them may be reckoned some of 
those mentioned in my last Lecture as having pre- 
ceded Scott in the field of Prose Fiction — particularly 
Mrs. Opie, Godwin, the two Miss Porters, Miss 
Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, and Mr. Maturin. Though 
these had all preceded Scott as writers of prose fiction, 
they continued to write novels after the Author of 
"Waverley had become the acknowledged, king of that 
species of literature ; and some of them were not less 
affected than their juniors by his surpassing influ- 
ence. Then, in the list of British novelists who made 
their appearance during the eighteen years in which 
the Waverley novels were in progress, some very 
shortly after the series had been begun, and others 
just as it was closing and Scott was retiring from the 
scene, I count no fewer than thirty-five names of 
some past or present note — to wit, in Scotland, or of 



LIST OF NO VE LISTS. 209 

Scottish birth, and under the immediate shadow of 
the Author of Waverley, John Gait, Mrs. Johnstone, 
Miss Ferrier, the Ettrick Shepherd, Allan Cunning- 
ham, Scott's son-in-law Lockhart, Professor Wilson, 
Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Andrew Picken, and David 
M. Moir ; in Ireland, or of Irish birth, Mr. Thomas 
Colley Grattan, Banim, Crofton Croker, Gerald 
Griffin, and William Carleton; and in England, 
and chiefly of English birth, Godwin's daughter 
Mrs. Shelley, Lady Caroline Lamb, Mr. Peacock, 
Thomas Hope, Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook and his 
brother Dr. James Hook, James Morier, Mr. Lister, 
Mr. Plumer Ward, Mr. Gleig, Mr. Horace Smith, 
Miss Mitford, Miss Landon, Mr. Disraeli, Sir Edward 
Bulwer Lytton, Mrs. Gore, Captain Marry at, Mr. 
James, and Mrs. Trollope. The majority of these, 
it will be observed, survived Scott ; and not a few of 
them, though they had taken their places as novel- 
writers while Scott was alive, attained their full cele- 
brity in that capacity after Scott was gone. In the 
group of some ten or twelve active novel writers upon 
whom the future hopes of the British novel were sup- 
posed to rest in 1832, the year of Scott's death, were 
Theodore Hook, Miss Mitford, Mr. Disraeli, Sir Ed- 
ward Bulwer Lytton, Mrs. Gore, Mr. James, and 
Mrs. Trollope. Several of these are still with us, and 

p 



210 BRITISH NO VE LISTS SINCE SCO TT. 

have certainly done more for the novel, in the matter 
of quantity at least, than could have been expected 
from them, — Sir Bulwer Lytton having produced in 
all some five-and-twenty novels ; Mrs. Gore and 
Mrs. Trollope I know not how many ; Mr. James 
I know not how many ; and Mr. Disraeli having 
escaped similar productiveness only by that series of 
events which diverted his attention to politics, and 
has made him a British minister. To this group of 
novelists left in the field at Scott's death there have 
been added, in the course of the quarter of a century 
which has elapsed since then, a little legion of new 
recruits. I will not venture on a complete list of 
their names ; but when I mention those of Lady 
Blessington, Miss Martineau, Mrs. S. C. Hall, Mr. 
Harrison Ainsworth, Mr. Leitch Ritchie, the Howitts, 
Mr. Folkestone Williams, Charles Dickens, Mr. 
Lever, Mr. Samuel Warren, Douglas Jerrold, Elliot 
Warburton, Mr. James Grant, Mrs. Crowe, Miss- 
Jewsbury, William Makepeace Thackeray, Mr. 
Lewes, Mr. Shirley Brooks, Mr. Whyte Melville, 
Mr. Wilkie Collins, the brothers Mayhew, Mr. 
Charles Heade, Mr. James Hannay, Mr. Whitty, 
Mr. Anthony Trollope, Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. Oliphant, 
Miss Kavanagh, Miss Mulock, Miss Sewell, Miss 
Yonge, Miss Craik, Miss Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell, 



■ST A TISTICS OF NO VEL- WRITING. 211 

Charles Kingsley, and the author of Tom Brown, 
they will suffice to suggest the others. All in all, 
were we to include in the catalogue of (i British No- 
velists since Scott," all who have written novels with 
some degree of popular success from the date of the 
first Waverley Novels to the present time, the cata- 
logue, I believe, would include over a hundred names. 1 
You will understand that I do not suppose included 
in this catalogue the contemporary American writers 
of prose fiction. These also have been numerous, 
and there have been among them, as you know, 
writers whose works have interested as powerfully 
on this side of the Atlantic as on the other; but, 
except by implication, I do not take them into 
account. 

If a list of the British novelists since Scott seems 
formidable, how much more formidable would be the 
sight of the novels produced by them gathered into 
one heap ! On this point allow me to present you 
with some statistics. The British Museum authorities 
cannot be sure that they receive copies of all the 
novels published in the British Islands ; but it is 

1 The names cited by me are those of the writers with 
whose works my own acquaintance, direct or indirect, chances 
to be greatest ; but, in the list prefixed to the second volume 
of Mr. Jeaffreson's Novels and Novelists (1858), I count thirty- 
five additional names, and every season is adding fresh oues. 

p2 



BBITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

likely that their collection is more complete, for the 
period with which we are now concerned, than any 
other that exists. Now, I have been informed that 
the number of novels standing on the shelves of the 
British Museum Library as having been published 
in Britain in the year 1820 — i. e. when the Waverley 
Novels were at the height of their popularity — is 26 
in all, counting 76 volumes; that, ten years later, 
or in 1830, when the Waverley series was nearly 
finished, the yield to the Library in this depart- 
ment had increased to 101 books, or 205 volumes 
within the year ; that, twenty years later, or in 1850, 
the yield was 98 books or 210 volumes ; and that for 
the year 1856, the yield was 88 books or 201 volumes. 
Taking these data as approximately accurate, they 
give us the curious fact that the annual yield of 
British novels had been quadrupled by the time of 
Scott's death as compared with what it had been when 
he was in the middle of his Waverley series — having 
risen from 26 a-year, or a new novel every fortnight, 
to about 100 a-year, or nearly two new novels every 
week ; and, moreover, that this proportion of about 
100 new novels every year, or two every week, has 
continued pretty steady since Scott's death, or, if 
there has been any change, has fallen off lately rather 
than increased. Making an average calculation from 



ST A TIST1CS OF NO VEL- WRITING. 213 

these facts, I find that there may have been in all 
about 3,000 novels, counting about 7,000 separate 
volumes, produced in these islands since the publi- 
cation of " Waverley." And this corresponds pretty 
well with a calculation made on independent grounds. 
In the London Book Catalogue, giving a classified 
Index of all books published in Great Britain from 
the year 1816 to the year 1851 inclusive, the novels 
or works of prose fiction occupy twenty-two pages, 
and amount to about 3,300 separate entries. In this 
list, however, reprints of old novels as well as trans- 
lations and reprints of imported novels are included. 
Balancing these against the probable yield of the six 
years, from 1852 to 1857 inclusive, not embraced in 
the Catalogue, I believe that my calculation, as just 
stated, may pass as near the truth. 

Now, you don't expect me to have read, during my 
pilgrimage, these 7,000 volumes of British novels. 
The thing is practicable. It is satisfactory to think 
that, by sticking to two novels a-week, any one who 
chooses may, at the present rate, keep up with the 
velocity of the novel-producing apparatus at work 
among us, and not have a single novel of deficit 
when he balances at the year's end. But I have not 
done it. I have read a good many novels — perhaps 
specimens, at least, of all our best novelists ; but, in 
what I have to say, I have no objection that you 



214 BRl TIS1I NO VE LISTS SINCE SCO TT. 

should consider me as one speaking of the composi- 
tion of the mass, in virtue of having inserted the 
tasting-scoop into it at a good many points ; and I 
shall trust a good deal to your own acquaintance 
with recent novels for the extension and correction, 
as well as for the corroboration, of my statements. 
What I propose to do is, first, to classify, in some 
sort of manner, the British novels that have made 
their appearance in the interval between Scott and 
our two great living representatives of a distinct 
style of prose fiction, Dickens and Thackeray — 
tracing certain general features in the miscellaneous 
aggregate, and alluding, as far as my knowledge 
serves me, to certain works of peculiar mark; then 
to say something of Dickens and Thackeray especi- 
ally, and of their effects on Prose Fiction; then, to 
indicate certain tendencies of British novel-writing 
discernible, I think, in the works of one or two 
writers who have come into the field since Dickens 
and Thackeray were in divided possession of it ; and 
lastly, in continuation of this, and by way of appro- 
priate close to these lectures, to indulge in a few 
speculations as to the possibilities of the British 
Novel of the future, 

In a classification of British novels from the date 
.of Scott's first occupation of the domain of Prose 



CLA SS1FICA TIOX OF RE CEXT XO VELS. 215 

Fiction, it is in accordance with what we might 
expect that we should find a considerable space 
occupied by (1) The Novel oe Scottish Liee and 
Manners, either in direct imitation of Scott, or in 
continuation and extension of his patriotic illustra- 
tions. This is, accordingly, what we do find. By far 
the largest proportion of those whom we have named 
as Scottish writers of fiction after Scott — Gait, Mrs. 
Johnstone, Miss Ferrier, Hogg, Allan Cunningham, 
Lockhart, Wilson, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Picken, 
and Moir — devoted by far the largest proportion of 
their labour in this walk to the composition of pic- 
tures and stories of Scottish life. In all of them, 
so far as they followed this line of fiction, Scott's 
influence may be traced ; but there are few of them 
in whom — whether by reason of independent pecu- 
liarities of their minds, or by reason of their having 
been natives of other parts of Scotland than that to 
which Scott belonged, or by reason of their having 
gone through different courses of Scottish experience 
from his — a peculiar and original vein of Scotticism 
is not discernible. Thus, in Hogg we have more of 
the humble shepherd-life of the Scottish Lowlands ; 
in Gait and Picken, more of the shrewd West- 
country Scottish life ; and, I may add, in Hugh 
Miller's Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland, 



216 BRITISH NO VE LISTS SINCE SCO TT. 

more of the life and character of that part of Scot- 
land where the Norse or Scandinavian borders on 
the Celtic. In one of his novels also, Gait carries 
his Scotchman across the Atlantic, and so exhibits 
Scotticism at work amid conditions in which Scott had 
never placed it. Finally, from Lockhart and Wilson, 
as men of extra-Scottish scholarship and culture, 
though they also selected native themes for their fic- 
tions, and grew up in close relations to Scott, we have 
illustrations of Scottish life and manners, conceived 
in a different literary spirit, and presenting different 
characteristics. In Wilson's Lights and Shadows of 
Scottish Life, and in his other Scottish stories, we 
have, unless my impression of them deceives me, a 
spirit of lyrical pathos, and of poetical Arcadianism, 
which tinges, without obscuring, the real Scottish 
colour, and reminds us of the Lake poet and disciple of 
Wordsworth, as well as of the follower of Scott ; while 
in his Nodes Amhrosianae, he burst away in a riot 
of Scotticism on which Scott had never ventured — a 
Scotticism not only- real and humorous, but daringly 
imaginative and poetic, to the verge of Lakism and 
beyond — displaying withal an originality of manner 
natural to a new cast of genius, and a command of 
resources in the Scottish idiom and dialect un- 
fathomed even by Scott. Wilson's "Ettrick Shep- 



CLASSIF1CA TION OF RECENT NO VELS. 217 

herd " is one of the most extraordinary creations of 
recent prose fiction. But it is not only novelists of 
Scottish birth that have occupied themselves, since 
Scott, in delineating Scottish nature and Scottish 
humours and characters. As Wordsworth purposely 
made the hero of his " Excursion " a Scottish pedlar, 
so, from the time of Scott to the present day, not a 
few English novelists have paid Scotland the com- 
pliment of treating it as an ideal land of rugged 
sublimity, both physical and moral, nearer to prim- 
eval nature, and less civilized and sophisticated 
than other parts of the British dominions, and have 
either laid their scenes there, or have fetched thence 
occasional characters, with all their Doric about 
them, to demean themselves among the Southerns 
in a way very different from that of such older 
literary representatives of the Scot as Mac Sarcasm 
and MacSycophant. Eor an example I may refer to 
Mr. Kingsley's Sandy Mackaye in Alton Locke — 
the cynical old Scotchman who keeps a book-stall 
in London, beats fallacies out of the young tailor 
by his talk, and rectifies, to a considerable extent, 
whatever is wrong in his neighbourhood. 

Besides the Scottish Novel, however, or the novel 
with Scottish character and circumstance in it, there 
has been (2) The Novel of Irish Liee and Man- 



218 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

NEiis. This had been initiated, as we have seen, by 

Miss Edgeworth and practised by Miss Owenson and 

others before Scott had established the corresponding 

Scottish Novel; but, as was natural, the example 

of what Scott had done for the sister-land helped to 

stimulate new Irish genius in the patriotic direction. 

Besides some of the later tales of Miss Edgeworth, 

we have, therefore, as specimens of the Irish Novel 

since Scott, the fictions of Banim, Crofton Croker, 

Oriffin, Carleton, and Lover, and some of those of 

Mr. Lever, and Mrs. S. C. Hall. 

As regards (3) The Novel oe English Liee and 
i 
Manners, it may be said, I think, that, though there 

have been specimens of it, there has been a deficiency 
of the variety that would exactly correspond to the 
Scottish Novels and the Irish Novels, as just 
described. Seeing that the majority of the British 
Novelists since Scott have been Englishmen or 
Englishwomen, they have, of course, laid their scenes 
in England, and have, in a sense, made the delinea- 
tion of English life and manners a professed part of 
their purpose. In this sense, Lady Caroline Lamb, 
Mr. Peacock, Theodore Hook, Mr. Plumer Ward, 
Mr. Disraeli, Sir Bulwer Lytton, Mrs. Gore, Mrs. 
Trollope, and, later still, Lady Blessington, Miss 
Martineau, Mr. Samuel Warren, Douglas Jerrold, 



CLA SSIFICA TION OF RECEXT XO VELS. 219 

Mrs. Crowe, Miss Jewsbury, Mr. Lewes, Mr. Shirley- 
Brooks, Mrs. Marsh, Miss Mulock and others have 
all been novelists of English life — some of them 
continuing the exquisite style of English domestic 
fiction which had been begun by Miss Austen, and 
others introducing original peculiarities into the 
novel, and extending its range farther over the sur- 
face and more into the corners of English life. In 
their hands, however, or in the hands of most 
of them, the Novel of English life and manners 
has not had that express nationality of character 
which is found in the contemporary Scottish and 
Irish Novels. Whether from the very variety of 
life and manners over so broad a country as England 
• — Yorkshire exhibiting one set of characteristics, 
Devonshire another, Kent and Sussex another, and 
so on; or whether because what could be done in 
the way of a novel of national English characteristics 
had already been done to a sufficient extent by 
Fielding and others of the eighteenth century, and 
there remained no such interest for British readers 
in that English system of life which was becoming 
the normal and conventional one for all, as in the 
outstanding bits of still unbooked barbaresque 
presented by Scotland and Ireland — certain it is 
that, in most of the novelists I have named, we have 



220 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

only a certain sublimation of English life as presented 
or supposed to be presented in the uppermost layers 
of society over the country at large, or as concen- 
trated in London and its suburbs. In the tales of 
Miss Mitford, and in some of those of Theodore 
Hook, Mr. Peacock, and perhaps also of Sir Bulwer 
Lytton and some others, without taking into account 
Dickens and Thackeray, I believe there are illustra- 
tions of English nature and life in their non-conven- 
tional and non-metropolitan varieties; and it is 
worthy of remark that of late this tendency to the 
illustration of the outstanding barbaresque and 
primitive in English society itself has been gaining 
strength. Miss Bronte made a refreshing innovation 
in English novel-writing when she drew her cha- 
racters and scenes and even portions of her dialect 
from her native Yorkshire ; Mrs. Gaskell has followed 
with her pictures of artisan life, and her specimens 
of provincial dialect in Lancashire ; and Mr. Kingsley 
has broken ground, as an artist, in Devonshire and 
other counties. There are rich fields of yet unbooked 
English life both in northern and in southern Eng- 
land ; and the literary centralization of English life 
in London has been owing, perhaps, to the centra- 
lization of the literary craft itself there. 

Out of this centralization, however, there has 



CLASSIFICA TION OF RECENT NO VELS. 221 

sprung (4) The Fashionable Novel, as it has 
been called, which aims at describing life as it goes 
on in the aristocratic portions of London society 
and in the portions immediately connected with 
these. Belgravia, Mayfair, and the West End of 
London generally are the topographical seats of this 
kind of Novel — saving, of course, that at Christmas, 
and after the Opera and Parliamentary season, the 
lords, baronets, ladies, wits, and footmen, who figure 
in them, are dispersed into the country or even as 
far as Scotland and the Continent. Representatives 
of this style of novel, are Lady Caroline Lamb, 
Theodore Hook again, Mr. Disraeli, Sir Bulwer 
Lytton again, Mrs. Gore, Mrs. Trollope, Lady Bles- 
sington, &c. But another kind of Novel, also 
perhaps the result of the same centralization of 
literary attention on the metropolis, has been (5) 
The Illustrious Criminal Novel, of which the 
most celebrated specimens have been Sir Bulwer 
Lytton's Paul Clifford and Mr. Ainsworth's Jack 
Sheppard. I need hardly say that this kind of novel, 
though dealing with roguery and criminal adventure, 
is by no means the same as that exemplified by 
Fielding in his " Jonathan Wild," or as the Spanish 
picaresque novels, or even as Defoe's illustrations 
of outlaw life in his da v. 



222 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

But Fiction gets tired of having its attention fixed 
on the Metropolis, just as Novelists get tired of living 
in it; and hence, by way of variety, we have had 
what may be called (6) The Traveller's Novel, the 
nature of which is that we are taken in it beyond 
the British Islands, usually in the train of " fashion- 
able" people, and are made to roam over the 
Continent, or to reside in Paris, or at German spas, 
or in Florence or other Italian cities. In most of 
the Fashionable Novels we have something of this ; 
but several of the novels of Sir Bulwer Lytton, and 
more still of Mrs. Gore's and Mrs. Trollope's, belong 
in a special manner to the class now designated. 
Mr. Thackeray also, after his peculiar fashion, will 
now and then take us, with the Kickleburys or 
some other English family, up the Rhine. Varieties 
of the Traveller's Novel, worthy of being separately 
classed, are (7 and 8) The Novel oe American Man- 
ners and Society, of which Mrs. Trollope, Captain 
Marryat, and, to some extent, also Mr. Dickens and 
Mr. Thackeray have given us specimens, and The 
Oriental Novel, or Novel of Eastern Manners 
and Society, of which we have had specimens 
in the Persian and Indian novels of Mr. Morier, 
Mr. Bailie Fraser, and others. These two kinds of 
Novel, in as far as they lead us, in a right spirit, 



CLASSIFICA TION OF RECENT NO VELS. 223 

over new regions of natural scenery and new social 
fields, are by no means unimportant. 

I may name as two additional kinds of Novel, in 
which the interest also arises in a great degree from 
imaginary locomotion, (9 and 10) The Military Novel 
and The Naval Novel — the first represented in such 
stories of military life and adventure as those of Mr. 
Gleig, Mr. Maxwell, Mr. Lever, and, more inciden- 
tally, in parts of Thackeray's fictions ; the second in 
the sea-stories of Captain Marryat, Captain Chamier, 
Mr. James Hannay, Mr. Cupples, and others. In 
some of these naval novels of later times, besides 
much of the interest to be found in such older sea- 
novels as those of Smollett, arising from the represen- 
tation of sailor-characters and the incidents and 
humours of ship-life, whether as packed up on board 
ship or as let loose, to the discomfiture of landsmen, 
in port- towns, there is much of another sort of inte- 
rest, not found in Smollett's sea-stories, and indeed 
alien to the literature of that day — the interest 
arising from the poetry of the sea itself, and from 
the relations of the hearty fellows, not only to each 
other in the gun-room and mess-room, but also to 
the vast element on which they float, and to the 
clouds that scud and the hurricanes that blow over 
the wilderness of waters. In this conjunction of two 



224: BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

sets of relations — the relations of the men to each 
other as individuals of the same crew, pursuing their 
voyage together, and the relations of the crew as a 
whole to the visible infinity in which they pursue 
their voyage, through which fly the omens which they 
mark, and over which hover and shriek the demons 
which they dread — the sailor's life is typical poeti- 
cally of human life in the general. Something of 
this notion has caught some of our later sea- 
novelists ; and it is not now only the jealousies and 
the practical jokes of the mess-room that they give 
us, but the superstitions also of the man at the wheel, 
or the yarns of the old sailors whiling away the calm 
of a starry night and exchanging the wild ideas of 
their marine religion, or the scene when all hands 
are on deck and the captain's voice is heard amid 
the storm, or when the ship is cleared for action, and 
Jack stands, no longer slouching and comical, but 
calm and magnificent, his breast and arms bare, the 
cannon levelled, and his match already at the touch- 
hole. 

But, while we have had novels of real action and 
adventure of all kinds, there have not been wanting 
specimens, at least, of (11) The Novel of Super- 
natural Phantasy. Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein, 
and Bulwer Lytton's Zanoni, are of this class ; and 



CLASSIFICATION OF RECENT NOVELS. 225 

there are one or two of Douglas Jerrold's tales, as 
well as of Dickens's Christmas Stories, in which 
there is a poetic use of ghostly agency. Nor have 
there been wanting specimens of (12) what may be 
called The Art and Culture Novel, in which the 
purpose is to exhibit the growth and education of an 
individual character of the more thoughtful order. 
By far the greatest example of this species of fiction 
in modern literature is the "Wilhelm Meister" of 
Goethe ; and there can be no doubt that that work, 
since it was translated, has had some influence on the 
aims of British novel-writing. Indeed, what is best 
in our fashionable novels seems to have arisen from 
an occasional desire on the part of those who practise 
such a style of fiction to make it subserve some such 
purpose. Some of Bulwer's novels are, perhaps, the 
nearest approach, in design, to the Art and Culture 
Novel that have been yet noticed among us; but 
I do not know that we have yet, or, at all events, 
that we have had till very recently, any very pure, 
pecimens of the novel so designated. 

All this while, as you will already have assured 
yourselves, we have by no means lost sight of (13), 
The Historical Novel, to which the genius of Scott 
gave, while he lived, such vigour and predominance. 
Since the impulse which Scott gave to the historical 

Q 



226 BRITISH NO VELISTS SIN CE SCOTT. 

variety of prose fiction we have had historical novels 
in great, and even increasing, abundance. We have 
had Scotch historical novels of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries from Gait, and romances of still 
older periods of Scottish history from Sir Thomas 
Dick Lauder and others ; we have had Irish his- 
torical novels from some of the Irish novelists already 
mentioned; and, in extension of Scott's few, but 
splendid, inroads upon national English History, we 
have had English historical novels from Godwin, 
from Sir Bulwer Lytton (witness his Harold and his 
Last of the Barons), from Horace Smith, from Mr. 
Ainsworth, and, above all, from Mr. G. P. R. James. 
Mr. Kingsley, also, has ventured on this field afresh 
in his Westward Ho ! ; nay, Mr. Thackeray, too, in 
his Esmond, and Mr. Dickens in his Barnaby Budge, 
where he describes the Gordon Riots. In the field of 
Continental History, broken in upon by Scott in his 
iC Quentin Durward" and his " Anne of Geierstein," 
James has had a realm to himself, save for such an 
occasional intrusion as that of Bulwer Lytton in his 
Rienzi. It is observable also, that, though Scott's pas- 
sion for the historical confined itself to the Gothic 
period of the European past, the taste for the his- 
torical in fiction or for the fictitious in history which 
he fostered has, since his time, overflowed the Gothic 



CLASSIFICA TION OF RECENT NO VELS. 227 

area altogether, and extended beyond it both chro- 
nologically and geographically. Chronologically — 
for have we not had fictions of Classical History in 
Lockhart's Valerius, a Roman Story, in Bulwer's 
Last Days of Pompeii, in Mr. Wilkie Collins' s 
Antoninus, in Kingsley's Hypatia, and in others still 
more ancient in their reference ? Geographically — 
for, besides the novels of oriental society and man- 
ners already alluded to, have we not novels of orien- 
tal history ? Of these the most celebrated, I believe, 
is Hope's Anastasius. or Memoirs of a modern Greek, 
written at the close of the Eighteenth century. It is 
sufficient to say of this novel, which is a description 
of the decrepit society of the Turkish Empire at the 
time indicated by the title, that some critics, includ- 
ing Baron Bunsen, praise it as of deeper epical import 
than any of Scott's. 

I have thus enumerated, by way of rough and 
obvious, rather than considered and thorough classi- 
fication, thirteen distinct varieties of the British 
novel, as in existence during the quarter of a cen- 
tury after Scott's influence had begun, and as in 
existence still. The classification, such as it is, has 
been made on external grounds, with reference to 
the different kinds of object-matter handled in the 

Q2 



228 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

novels. Had the classification been according to the 
different notions or styles of art employed in the 
treatment of the object-matter, whatever its kind, 
fewer heads might have sufficed. Thus, Sir Bulwer 
Lytton classifies all novels into the three kinds of 
the Familiar, the Picturesque, and the Intellectual — 
not a very scientific classification, but one which has 
an obvious meaning. Whichever classification we 
use — whether the external one, according to the 
matter, or the internal one, according to the style of 
treatment — Sir Bulwer Lytton himself may carry off 
the palm from all his coevals in respect of versatility. 
Take his own classification, according to styles of 
treatment, and he has given us Novels Familiar, 
Novels Picturesque, and Novels Intellectual. Take 
the other classification, according to the kinds of 
matter treated, and he has given us novels ranking 
under at least seven of the thirteen heads enumerated 
— to wit, the Novel of English Manners, the Fashion- 
able Novel, the Novel of Illustrious Villainy, the 
Traveller's Novel, the Novel of Supernatural Phan- 
tasy, the Art and Culture Novel, and the Historical 
Novel. I say nothing of any other of Bulwer's 
merits besides this of his versatility, save that, of all 
British novelists, he seems to have worked most con- 
sciously on a theory of the Novel as a form of litera- 



THE FASHIONABLE NOVEL. 229 

ture. This, indeed, may be the very cause of his 
versatility. 

Of all the kinds of novel that I have mentioned, 
perhaps the most characteristic product of the time 
was, and is, the Fashionable Novel. I think we 
shall agree that this very popular form of fiction 
may now very safely be dispensed with — that no 
harm would attend its total and immediate extinc- 
tion. Not that the classes of society whose feelings 
and doings this form of fiction professes to represent 
are classes whose feelings and doings are unimpor- 
tant or uninteresting. Far from it. No one can 
be in any place where the members of these classes 
are gathered together, without feeling that, behind 
those faces, fresh or pale, haggard or beautiful, there 
are brains at work, more active than the average, 
and that those hearts, male or female, have their pas- 
sions and their histories. Let whosoever is qualified 
tell forth the peculiar experience of those classes in 
any serious form that may be possible ; and let what 
is ridiculous or despicable among them live under 
the terror of Michael Angelo Titmarsh. Eut in the 
Fashionable Novel, commonly so called, there is no 
sort of information at all. There is no soundness in 
it. Human life there is all resolved into that one 
interest, into which, as we are told, things had 



230 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

resolved themselves also in the world before the 
Flood — the interest of marrying and giving in mar- 
riage. One could almost wish for another Flood, 
if that would put an end to it. At all events let us 
throw all the cold water upon it that we ourselves 
can. For, so far as other interests are bound up, 
in the Fashionable Novel, with that primary and 
fundamental one, the effect is but to add to the 
silliness, to make the frivolity more mischievous. 
In most Fashionable Novels, for example, there is 
a dash of politics. The two Houses of Parliament 
are appendages to that Vanity Fair in which the 
ladies and gentlemen move ; and, so far as the gen- 
tlemen have any occupation in addition to flirtation, 
it is in the function of legislating for their country. 
The veteran baronet goes to' the Commons after 
dinner, or retires to his blue-books ; the young hero 
aspires to the representation of the county and a 
futurity as a Pitt or a Canning ; changes of ministry 
and dissolutions are parts of the machinery of the 
novel ; and always at some point of the story there 
are the humours of an Election. These things are 
in our social life, and represented they must be in 
our fictions, like any other social facts, and in full 
proportion; but, represented as they are in our 
Fashionable Novels — why, it is catering for Revolu- 



THE FASHIONABLE NOVEL. 231 

tion ! Parliament an appendage to Vanity Fair ; 
legislation a relief from flirtation ; those figures of 
gentlemen and ladies moving about in their charmed 
circle, and having their destinies, and the chances 
of their marriages affected by votes, changes of 
ministry, and dissolutions — why, where on earth, all 
this time, in the Fashionable Novelist's imagination, 
is the thing called the Country? Nay, and if there 
is serious political talk for a page or two, what talk 
it is ! So and so — such and such a minister — " plays 
his cards well ! " That is the phrase. Plays his 
cards well ! Is Government, then, card-playing ? 
In a sense it may be ; for the suit is diamonds, and 
spades are the agricultural interest, and hearts too 
have to be played with, and, if politics is long con- 
sidered card-playing, it may all end in clubs. 

One of the best passages in Bleak House is a 
passage satirizing in real life that mode of talking 
about politics as an amusement of "fashionable" 
persons, which has reproduced itself in the Fashion- 
able Novel. It is an account of the talk that went 
on at the Dedlock family mansion of Chesney Wold 
amid the guests there assembled — the chief colloquists 
being Lord Boodle and Mr. Buffy. 

" He (Lord Boodle) perceives with astonishment that, sup- 
posing the present government to be overthrown, the limited 



232 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

choice of the Crown in the formation of a new ministry would 
lie between Lord Goodie and Sir Thomas Doodle — supposing 
it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodie to act with Goodie; 
which may be assumed to be the case, in consequence of the 
breach arising out of that affair with Hoodie. Then, giving 
the Home Department and the leadership of the House of 
Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to Koodle, the Colonies 
to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you 
to do with Noodle ? You can't offer him the Presidency 
of the Council ; that is reserved for Poodle ! You can't put 
him in the Woods and Forests ; that is hardly good enough 
for Quoodle ! "What follows 1 That the country is ship- 
wrecked, lost, and gone to pieces, because you can't provide 
for Noodle ? 

" On the other hand, the Eight Honorable William Buffy, 
M.P., contends across the table with some one else, that the 
shipwreck of the country, — of which there is no doubt ; it is 
only the manner of it that is in question, — is attributable to 
Cuffy. If you had done with Cuffy what you ought to have 
done when he first came into Parliament, and had prevented 
him from going over to Duffy, you would have got him into 
alliance with Fuffv ; you would have had with you the weight 
attaching as a smart debater to Guffy ; you would have 
brought to bear upon the elections the wealth of Huffy ; you 
would have got in for three counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy ; 
and you would have strengthened your administration by the 
official knowledge and the business-habits of Muffy ! All this 
instead of being, as you now are, dependent on the mere 
caprice of Puffy ! " 

Need I read more? If satire could annihilate 
nonsense, would not the Boodle and Buffy style of 
politics — which is very much that of our Fashionable 
Novels — have been by this time beyond the moon? 



DICKENS AND THA CKERA Y. 233 

Prose Fiction in Britain — nay, in the rest of 
Europe and in America too — has received a fresh 
impulse and has taken on a new set of characteristics, 
since Dickens and Thackeray became, for us, its 
chief representatives. These two writers belong to the 
classic roll ; they are now in their living activity, and 
the buzz of critics is about them ; but a time will come 
when they shall have their settled places, and, the 
buzz having transferred itself to others whose turn 
of penance it will then be, they shall be seen in 
their full proportions relatively to the Fieldings and 
Smolletts and Sternes that went before them, and 
men, noting their differences in comparison with 
these, may assert also, more boldly than we, what 
shall seem their superiorities. Dickens, as you are 
aware, was the first in the field. His Sketches by 
Boz appeared in 1837 followed, within the next ten 
years, by his Pickwick, his Nicholas Nickleby, his 
Oliver Twist (previously published in magazine parts), 
his Humphrey's Clock (including The Old Curiosity 
Shop and Barnaby Budge), his Martin Chuzzlewit, 
and several of his Christmas Stories. It was not till 
after these ten years of Dickens's established popu- 
larity, or till about the year 1847, that Mr. Thackeray 
— whose extraordinary powers had already, however, 
been long recognized within a limited circle of intel- 



234 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

lectual men, in virtue of his numerous scattered 
publications and papers — stepped forth into equally 
extensive celebrity. His Vanity Fair was the first 
efficient proclamation to the public at large of the 
existence of this signal British talent, increasingly 
known since by the republication of those Miscel- 
lanies which had been buried in magazines and other 
periodicals, and by the successive triumphs of the 
Snob Papers, Pendennis, Esmond, the Newcomes, and 
various Christmas Books. Parallel with these had 
been running later fictions from Mr. Dickens's pen 
— Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, and Bleak 
House. Mr. Dickens also had the last word in his 
Little Dorrit, until the other day, when Mr. Thacke- 
ray recommenced in his Virginians. For, with the 
two writers, according to the serial system, it seems 
to be, whether by arrangement or by necessity, as 
with Castor and Pollux ; both cannot be above the 
horizon of the publishing world at once, and, when 
the one is there, the other takes his turn in Tartarus. 
But whether simultaneously visible or alternate, the 
two are now so closely associated in the public mind 
that whenever the one is mentioned the other is 
thought of. It is now Dickens and Thackeray, 
Thackeray and Dickens, all the world over. Nay, 
not content with associating them, people have got 



DICKENS AND THACKERAY. 235 

into the habit of contrasting them and naming them 
in opposition to each other. There is a Dickens 
faction, and there is a Thackeray faction ; and there 
is no debate more common, wherever literary talk 
goes on, than the debate as to the respective merits 
of Dickens and Thackeray. 

Perhaps there is a certain ungraciousness in our 
thus always comparing and contrasting the two 
writers. We ought to be but too glad that we have 
such a pair of contemporaries, yet living and in their 
prime, to cheer on against each other. I felt this 
strongly once when I saw the two men together. The 
occasion was historic. It was in June, 1857 ; the place 
was Norwood Cemetery. A multitude had gathered 
there to bury a man known to both of them, and 
who had known both of them well — a man whom we 
have had incidentally to name as holding a place, in 
some respects peculiar, in the class of writers to 
which they belong, though his most effective place 
was in a kindred department of literature ; a man, 
too, of whom I will say that, let the judgment on 
his remaining writings be permanently what it may, 
and let tongues have spoken of him this or that 
awry, there breathed not, to my knowledge, within 
the unwholesome bounds of what is specially Lon- 
don, any one in whose actual person there was more 



236 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

of the pith of energy at its tensest, of that which in 
a given myriad anywhere distinguishes the one. 
How like a little Nelson he stood, dashing back his 
hair, and quivering for the verbal combat ! The flash 
of his wit, in which one quality the island had not 
his match, was but the manifestation easiest to be 
observed of a mind compact of sense and informa- 
tion, and of a soul generous and on fire. And now 
all that remained of Jerrold was enclosed within the 
leaden coffin which entered the cemetery gates. As 
it passed, one saw Dickens among the bearers of the 
pall, his uncovered head of genius stooped, and 
the wind blowing his hair. Close behind came 
Thackeray ; and, as the slow procession wound up 
the hill to the chapel, the crowd falling into it in 
twos and threes and increasing its length, his head 
was to be seen by the later ranks, towering far in the 
front above all the others, like that of a marching 
Saul. And so up to the little chapel they moved ; and, 
after the service for the dead, down again to another 
slope of the hill, where, by the side of one of the 
walks, and opposite to the tombstone of Blanchard, 
Jerrold's grave was open. There the last words were 
read ; the coffin was lowered ; and the two, among 
hundreds of others, looked down their farewell. And 
so, dead at the age of fifty-four, Jerrold was left in 



. DICKENS AND THACKERAY. 237 

his solitary place, where the rains were to fall, and 
the nights were to roll overhead, and but now and 
then, on a summer's day, a chance stroller would 
linger in curiosity ; and back into the roar of London 
dispersed the funeral crowd. Among those remitted 
to the living were the two of whom we speak, aged, 
the one forty-five, the other forty-six. Why not 
be thankful that the great city had two such men 
still known to its streets ; why too curiously institute 
comparisons between them ? 

. And yet, in instituting such comparisons, the 
public are guided by a right critical instinct. There 
can be no doubt that the two writers bring out and 
throw into relief each other's peculiarities — that they 
are, in some respects, the opposites of each other ; 
and that each is most accurately studied when his 
differences from the other are noted and scrutinized. 
But, first, as to their general resemblances. Both 
novelists belong, in the main, though by no means 
exclusively, to the order of Humorists, or writers 
of Comic Fiction. Moreover, under this distinction, 
both stand very much in the same relation to their 
predecessors in respect of the kind or kinds of fiction, 
previously in use, to which they have attached them- 
selves, and in respect of the extension of range which 
that kind or those kinds of fiction have received at 



238 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

their hands. The connexions of both at first were 
chiefly with that which we have distinguished as 
the Novel of English Life and Manners ; and both, 
in working this kind of Novel, have added immensely 
to its achievements and capabilities in one particular 
field — that of the Metropolis. The Novels of Dickens 
and Thackeray are, most of them, novels of London; 
it is in the multifarious circumstance of London life 
and its peculiar humours that they move most 
frequently and have their most characteristic being. 
A fact not unimportant in the appreciation of both ! 
As the greatest aggregate of human beings on the 
face of the earth, as a population of several millions 
crushed together in one dense mass on a space of 
a few square miles-— this mass consisting, for the 
most part, of Englishmen, but containing also as 
many Scotchmen as there are in Edinburgh, as 
many Irishmen as there are in Dublin, and a perfect 
Polyglott of other nations in addition — London is 
as good an epitome of the world as anywhere exists, 
presenting all those phenomena of interest, whether 
serious or humorous, which result from great num- 
bers, heterogeneousness of composition, and close 
social packing ; besides which, as the metropolis of 
the British Empire, it is the centre whither all the 
sensations of the Empire tend, and whence the 



DICKENS AND THACKERAY. 239 

motive currents issue that thrill to the extremities. 
If any city could generate and sustain a species of 
Novel entirely out of its own resources,, it might 
surely be London; nor would ten thousand novels 
exhaust it. After all the mining efforts of previous 
novelists in so rich a field, Dickens and Thackeray have 
certainly sunk new shafts in it, and have come upon 
valuable veins not previously disturbed. So much 
is this the case that, without injustice to Fielding 
and others, Dickens and Thackeray might well be 
considered as the founders of a peculiar sub-variety 
of the Novel of English Life and Manners, to be 
called " The British Metropolitan Novel." As Lon- 
doners, however, do not always stay in London, 
or, vrhile in London, are not always engrossed by 
what is passing there, so our two novelists both 
range, and range about e qually, beyond the bounds 
of the kind of fiction thus designated. They do 
give us English life and manners out of London; 
nay, they have both, as we have seen, given us 
specimens also of their ability in at least two varieties 
of the Novel distinct from that of English life and 
manners — the Traveller's Novel, and the Historical 
Novel. If, in this respect of external range, either 
has the advantage, it is perhaps Dickens — who, in 
his Christmas stories, and in stories interspersed 



240 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

through his larger fictions, has given us specimens 
of his skill in a kind of prose phantasy which 
Thackeray has not attempted. 

In addition to the difference just indicated, critics 
have pointed out, or readers have discovered for 
themselves, not a few other differences between 
Dickens and Thackeray. 

In the mere matter of literary style, there is a 
very obvious difference. Mr. Thackeray, according 
to the general opinion, is the more terse and idio- 
matic, and Mr. Dickens the more diffuse and 
luxuriant writer. There is an Horatian strictness 
and strength in Thackeray which satisfies the most 
cultivated taste and wins the respect of the severest 
critic; but Dickens, if he is the more rapid "and 
careless on the whole, seems more susceptible to 
passion, and rises to a keener and wilder song. 
Referring the difference of style to its origin in 
difference of intellectual constitution, critics are 
accustomed to say that Thackeray's is the mind of 
closer and harder, and Dickens's the mind of looser 
and richer texture — that the intellect of the one is 
the more penetrating and reflective, and that of the 
other the more excursive and intuitive. 

Passing to the substance of their novels, as com- 
posed of incident, description, and character, we are 



DICKENS AND THACKERAY. 241 

able to give more definiteness to the popularly felt 
differences between the two novelists in this respect, 
by attending to the analogies between novel-writing 
and the art of painting. In virtue of his descriptions 
or imaginations of scenery, the Novelist may be con- 
sidered along with Landscape and Object painters; 
and, in virtue of his characters and his incidents, 
along with Figure and Action painters. So, on the 
whole, we find the means of indicating a novelist's 
range and peculiarities by having recourse to the 
kindred craft for names and terms. On this plan 
we should have to say that, while both our novelists 
are masterly artists, the art of Dickens is the wider 
in its range as to object and circumstance. I may 
here use a sentence or two on this subject which I 
wrote for another occasion. " Dickens," I then said, 
" can give you a landscape proper — a piece of the 
" rural English earth in its summer or in its winter 
" dress, with a bit of water and a village spire in it ; 
" he can give you, what painters seldom attempt, 
" a great patch of flat country by night, with the red 
" trail of a railway-train traversing the darkness ; 
" he can succeed in a sea-piece ; he can describe 
" the crowded quarter of a city, or the main street 
" of a country town, by night or by day ; he can 
" paint a garden, sketch the interior of a cathedral, 

R 



242 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

" or photograph the interior of a hut or of a drawing- 
" room ; he can even be minute in his delineations 
" of single articles of dress or of furniture. Take 
u him again in the Figure department. Here he 
" can be an animal painter, with Landseer, when 
" he likes, as witness his dogs, ponies, and ravens ; 
" he can be a historical painter, as witness his 
" description of the Gordon Riots ; he can be a 
" caricaturist, like Leech ; he can give you a bit of 
" village-life with Wilkie ; he can paint a haggard 
" scene of low city life, so as to remind one of some of 
" the Dutch artists, or a pleasant family scene, gay or 
" sentimental, reminding one of Maclise or of Frank 
(C Stone; he can body forth romantic conceptions 
" of terror or beauty that have arisen in his imagi- 
" nation ; he can compose a fantastic fairy piece ; he 
" can even succeed in a dream or allegory, where the 
" figures are hardly human. The range of Thackeray, 
ct on the other hand, is more restricted. In the land- 
fC scape department, he can give you a quiet little bit 
" of background, such as a park, a clump of trees, or 
" the vicinity of a country-house, with a village seen 
" in the sunset ; a London street also, by night or by 
" day, is familiar to his eye ; but, on the whole, his 
li scenes are laid in those more habitual places of 
" resort where the business or the pleasure of aristo- 



DICKENS AND THACKERAY. 243 

cratic or middle-class society goes on — a pillared 
clubhouse in Pall Mall, the box or pit of a theatre, 
a brilliant reception-room in Mayfair, a public 
dancing-room, a newspaper office, a shop in Pater- 
noster Row, the interior of a married man's house, 
or a bachelor's chambers in the Temple. And his 
choice of subjects from the life corresponds. Men 
and women as they are, and as they behave daily in 
the charmed circles of rank, literature, and fashion, 
are the objects of Mr. Thackeray's pencil; and 
in his delineations of them, he seems to unite the 
strong and fierce characteristics of Hogarth, with 
a touch both of Wilkie and Maclise, and not a 
little of that regular grace and bloom of colouring 
which charm us in the groups of Watteau.-" 
Within his range, the merit of superior care, clear- 
ness, and finish may be assigned to Thackeray ; but 
there are passages in Dickens — such as the descrip- 
tion of the storm on the East Coast in his Copperfield 
— to which, for visual weirdliness, there is nothing 
comparable in the pages of his rival. 

As to the difference of ethical spirit, or of general 
philosophy, between the two writers, the public have 
come to a very definite conclusion. Dickens, it is 
said, is the more genial, kindly, cheerful, and senti- 
mental ; Thackeray, the more harsh, caustic, cynical, 

r2 



244 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

and satirical writer. And, proceeding on this dis- 
tinction, the two factions argue, consistently with it, 
in behalf of their respective favourites — the adherents 
of Dickens objecting to what they call Thackeray's 
merciless views of human life, and his perception 
of the mean at the roots of everything ; and the 
adherents of Thackeray, on the other hand, main- 
taining the wholesome effect of his bracing sense in 
comparison with what they call Dickens's sickly 
sentimentalism. For us, joining neither of the fac- 
tions, it is enough to recognise the fact of the 
difference on which they argue so constantly. The 
philosophy of Dickens certainly is the professed 
philosophy of kindliness, of a genial interest in all 
things great and small, of a light English joyousness, 
and a sunny universal benevolence ; whereas, though 
I do not agree with those that represent Thackeray's 
writings as mainly cynical, but think that, in such 
characters as his Warrington, he has shown his 
belief in manly nobleness, and his power of repre- 
senting it — yet it seems clear that the pervading 
philosophy of his writings, far more than those of 
Dickens, is that of a profoundly reasoned pococur- 
antism, of a sceptical acquiescence in the world as 
it is ; or, to use his own words in describing the state 
of mind of his hero Pendennis, u of a belief, qualified 



DICKENS AND THACKERAY. 2 45 

with scorn, in all things extant." The difference is 
perhaps hest seen, and with most advantage to 
Thackeray, when it is expressed negatively — that is, 
with reference not to what the two writers respec- 
tively inculcate, but to what they respectively attack 
and oppose. Stated so (but such a method of state- 
ment, it should be remembered, is not the fairest for 
all purposes), the philosophy of Dickens may be 
denned as Anti-Puritanism, whereas that of Thack- 
eray may be defined as Anti-Snobbism. Whatever 
practice, institution, or mode of thinking is adverse, 
in Mr. Dickens's view, to natural enjoyment and 
festivity, against that he makes war ; whereas that 
which Mr. Thackeray hunts out and hunts down 
everywhere is Snobbism. Although, in their positive 
forms, both philosophies are good, perhaps in their 
negative applications Mr. Thackeray's is the least 
liable to exception. Anti-Snobbism, it may indeed 
be admitted, is not a perfect summary of the whole 
decalogue; but, in the present day, and especially 
in and about London, it is that which most nearly 
passes for such a summary ; and, seeing that there is 
no question anywhere but that Snobbism is a bad 
thing, and little difficulty anywhere in knowing 
what it is, Mr. Thackeray's doctrine is one to which 
there needs be less hesitation in wishing universal 



246 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

good speed than to the corresponding doctrine of his 
rival—a doctrine which would too hastily extinguish 
that, about the nature of which, and its proper varie- 
ties, there may well be much controversy. Farther, 
it is to Mr. Thackeray's advantage, in the opinion 
of many, that in his satires in behalf of Anti- 
Snobbism, or of any other doctrine that he may 
hold, it is men and their modes of thinking and 
acting that he attacks, and not social institutions. 
To do battle with the vanity, the affectation, the 
insincerity, the Snobbism, that lies under each man's 
own hat, and actuates each man's own gestures and 
conduct, is Mr. Thackeray's way ; and rarely or 
never does he concern himself with social anomalies 
or abuses. In this respect he is singularly acqui- 
escent and conservative for a man of such general 
strength of intellect. Mr. Dickens, on the other 
hand, is singularly aggressive and opinionative. 
There is scarcely a social question on which he has 
not touched ; and there are few of his novels in 
which he has not blended the functions of a social 
and political critic with those of the artist, to a 
degree detrimental, as many think, to his genius in 
the latter capacity. For Mr. Dickens's wonderful 
powers of description are no guarantee for the cor- 
rectness of his critical judgments in those particulars 



DICKENS AND TEA CKERA Y. , , 247 

to which he may apply them. " We may owe one 
" degree of respect/' I have said, " to Dickens, as 
" the describer of Squeers and Creakle, and quite 
" another degree of respect when he tells us how he 
" would have boys educated. Mr. Spenlow may be 
u a capital likeness of a Doctors' Commons lawyer ; 
" and yet this would not be the proper ground for 
" concluding Mr. Dickens's view of a reform in the 
" Ecclesiastical Courts to be right. No man has 
" given more picturesque illustrations of London 
" criminal life ; yet he might not be equally trust- 
" worthy in his notions of prison-discipline. His 
" Dennis, the hangman, is a powerfully conceived 
" character ; yet this is no reason for accepting his 
" opinion on capital punishments." And yet how 
much we owe to Mr. Dickens for this very opinion- 
ativeness ! With his real shrewdness, his thought- 
fulness, his courage, what noble hits he has made ! 
The Administrative Reform Association might have 
worked for ten years without producing half of the 
effect which Mr. Dickens has produced in the same 
direction, by flinging out the phrase, " The Circum- 
locution Office." He has thrown out a score of such 
phrases, equally efficacious for social reform ; and it 
matters little that some of them might turn out on 
inquiry to be ludicrous exaggerations. 



248 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

All these differences, however, between Dickens 
and Thackeray, and still others that might be 
pointed out, resolve themselves into the one funda- 
mental difference, that they are artists of opposite 
schools. Thackeray is a novelist of what is called the 
Real school; Dickens is a novelist of the Ideal or 
Romantic school. (The terms Real and Ideal have 
been so run upon of late, that their repetition begins 
to nauseate ; but they must be kept, for all that, till 
better equivalents are provided.) It is Thackeray's 
aim to represent life as it is actually and historically 
— men and women, as they are, in those situations 
in which they are usually placed, with that mixture 
of good and evil and of strength and foible which 
is to be found in their characters, and liable only to 
those incidents which are of ordinary occurrence. 
He will have no faultless characters, no demigods — 
nothing but men and brethren. And from this it 
results that, when once he has conceived a character, 
he works downwards and inwards in his treatment 
of it, making it firm and clear at all points in its 
relations to hard fact, and cutting down, where 
necessary, to the very foundations. Dickens, on the 
other hand, with all his keenness of observation, is 
more light and poetic in his method. Having 
once caught a hint from actual fact, he generalizes 



DICKENS AND THACKERAY. 249 

it, runs away with this generalization into a corner, 
and develops it there into a character to match ; 
which character he then transports, along with 
others similarly suggested, into a world of semi- 
fantastic conditions, where the laws need not be 
those of ordinary probability. He has characters of 
ideal perfection and beauty, as well as of ideal ugli- 
ness and brutality — characters of a human kind 
verging on the supernatural, as well as characters 
actually belonging to the supernatural. Even his 
situations and scenery often lie in a region beyond 
the margin of everyday life. Now both kinds of 
art are legitimate; and each writer is to be tried 
within his own kind by the success he has attained 
in it. Mr. Thackeray, I believe, is as perfect a 
master in his kind of art as is to be found in the 
whole series of British prose writers ; a man in 
whom strength of understanding, acquired know- 
ledge of men, subtlety of perception, deep philo- 
sophic humour, and exquisiteness of literary taste, 
are combined in a degree and after a manner not 
seen in any known precedent. But the kinds of 
art are different ; and I believe some injustice has 
been done to Mr. Dickens of late, by forgetting 
this when comparing him with his rival. It is as if 
we were to insist that all painters should be of the 



250 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

school of Hogarth. The Ideal or Romantic artist 
must be true to nature as well as the Real artist, but 
he may be true in a different fashion. He may take 
hints from Nature in her extremest moods, and make 
these hints the germs of creations fitted for a world 
projected imaginatively beyond the real one, or 
inserted into the midst of the real one, and yet ima- 
ginatively moated round from it. Homer, Shake- 
speare, and Cervantes, are said to be true to nature ; 
and yet there is not one of their most pronounced 
characters exactly such as ever was to be found, or 
ever will be found in nature — not one of them 
which is not the result of some suggestion snatched 
from nature, in one or other of her uttermost 
moments, and then carried away and developed in 
the void. The question with the Real artist, with 
respect to what he conceives, is, " How would this 
actually be in nature; in what exact setting of 
surrounding particulars would it appear ? " and, with 
a view to satisfy himself on this question, he dis- 
sects, observes, and recollects all that is in historical 
relation to his conception. The question with the 
Ideal artist is, " What can be made out of this ; 
with what human conclusions, ends, and aspirations 
can it be imaginatively interwoven, so that the 
whole, though attached to nature by its origin, shall 



DICKENS AND THACKERAY. 251 

transcend or overlie nature on the side of the pos- 
sibly existent — the might, could, or should be, or 
the might, could, or should have been ? n All 
honour to Thackeray and the prose-fiction of social 
reality; but much honour, too, to Dickens, for 
maintaining among us, even in the realm of the 
light and the amusing, some representation in prose 
of that art of ideal phantasy, the total absence of 
which in the literature of any age would be a sign 
nothing short of hideous. The true objection to 
Dickens is, that his idealism tends too much to 
extravagance and caricature. It would be possible 
for an ill-natured critic to go through all his works, 
and to draw out in one long column a list of their 
chief characters, annexing in a parallel column the 
phrases or labels by which these characters are dis- 
tinguis hed, and of which they are generalizations — 
the " There's some credit in being jolly here" of 
Mark Tapley ; the " It isn't of the slightest conse- 
quence " of Toots ; the " Something will turn up " 
of Mr. Micawber, &c._, &c. Even this, however, is 
a mode of art legitimate, I believe, in principle, as it 
is certainly most effective in fact. There never was 
a Mr. Micawber in nature, exactly as he appears in 
the pages of Dickens ; but Micawberism pervades 
nature through and through ; and to have extracted 



252 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT/- . 

this quality from nature, embodying the full essence 
of a thousand instances of it in one ideal mon- 
strosity, is a feat of invention. From the incessant 
repetition by Mr. Dickens of this inventive process 
openly and without variation, except in the results, 
the public have caught what is called his mannerism 
or trick ; and hence a certain recoil from his later 
writings among the cultivated and fastidious. But 
let any one observe our current table-talk or our 
current literature, and, despite this profession of 
dissatisfaction, and in the very circles where it most 
abounds, let him note how gladly Dickens is used, 
and how frequently his phrases, his fancies, and the 
names of his characters come in, as illustration, 
embellishment, proverb, and seasoning. Take any 
periodical in which there is a severe criticism of 
Dickens' s last publication ; and, ten to one, in the 
same periodical, aDd perhaps by the same hand, 
there will be a leading article, setting out with a 
quotation from Dickens that flashes on the mind 
of the reader the thought which the whole article is 
meant to convey, or containing some allusion to one 
of Dickens's characters which enriches the text in 
the middle and floods it an inch round with colour 
and humour. Mr. Thackeray's writings also yield 
similar contributions of pithy sayings applicable to 



NOVEL OF COCKNEY FUN. 253 

the occasions of common talk, and of typical char- 
acters serving the purpose of luminous metonymy — 
as witness his Becky Sharps, his Fokers, his Captain 
Costigans, and his Jeameses ; but, in his case, owing 
to his habit rather of close delineation of the complex 
and particular as nature presents it, than of rapid 
fictitious generalization, more of the total effect, 
whether of admiration or of ethical instruction, takes 
place in the act of reading him. 

The imitations, direct and indirect, of Thackeray 
and Dickens are, I need not say, innumerable. It is 
owing to their extraordinary popularity that, while 
all those forms of the novel which I enumerated at 
the beginning of this discourse, are still in practice 
amongst us, such a preponderance has within the 
last few years been attained by what may be called 
the Metropolitan Comic Fiction, or the Novel of 
Cockney Fun — a kind of fiction which has degene- 
rated in some hands into something so frivolous that 
the sooner it ends the better. Of late years, how- 
ever, there have been signs among us, I believe, of 
the rise of a new kind or of new kinds of novel- 
writing, differing not only from this wretched novel 
of metropolitan fun, but also from the established 
styles either of Dickens or of Thackeray. The 



254 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

change can hardly be assigned to any particular year; 
but it may be convenient to date it from the eventful 
year 1848. 

If I am not mistaken, the year 1848 will have to 
be referred back to for several generations to come 
as an epoch commencing much in European history. 
It was not only that then a wave of democratic 
revolution passed over the face of Europe, overthrow- 
ing thrones and constitutionalizing for a moment 
absolute governments, and that this movement was 
followed by a reaction, apparently restoring what 
had been cast down, but in reality leaving all out of 
equilibrium, and bequeathing a heritage of wars the 
duration of which no one can calculate. It was that 
at this instant of political commotion, and involved 
in the commotion itself, partly as cause and partly as 
immediate effect, there was an outburst into the in- 
tellectual atmosphere of Europe of a whole set of new 
ideas and speculations previously latent or in course 
of formation in individual minds, or within the pre- 
cincts of philosophical schools, but then irrecoverably 
let loose into the general consciousness, to exist as 
so much theory, baulked of all present realization, 
but on that very account elaborating itself more 
fiercely in meditation and in verbal controversy, and 
overhanging more visibly the social fabric on whose 



RECEXT SPECULATIONS. 255 

towers and foundations it means to topple down. It 
was not without significance, for example, that the 
short-lived French Republic of 1848 called itself La 
Repiibliqae Democratique et Sociale. By the addition 
of the second adjective it was meant that the new 
Revolution proceeded on principles and involved ends 
which had not existed in the great prior Revolution 
of 1789, and that, in addition to the ideas of Liberty, 
Equality, and Fraternity which that Revolution had 
promulgated and formulized, this carried in it a set 
of ideas, excogitated since, and trenching more 
deeply upon established human arrangements — the 
ideas that had been forming themselves in the minds 
of Saint- Simonians, Fourierists, and other speculative 
Parisian sects, and that had assumed for their general 
designation the vague word Socialism. Associated 
with these novelties of Socialism which were flung into 
the European atmosphere, chiefly from France, at the 
date under notice, were others, of different origin 
geographically — some capable of being comprehended 
under the same name as tending to radical social 
changes, others more purely speculative in form, and 
appertaining to the traditional questions and varia- 
tions of theology. Altogether there mounted into 
the intellectual air of Europe in or about the year 
1848 an unusual quantity of speculation that, with 



256 BRITISH NO VELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

respect to the popular or general mind, might be 
called new ; and it still hangs there like a cloud. 
At every moment in the world's history existing 
society has thus had hanging over it a certain accu- 
mulation of recent theory freighted with changes 
about to be precipitated ; but it may be questioned 
whether within human memory there has been a 
time when the accumulation was so large and various 
as- at present. Take the Continent, and what do we 
see there ? As a flooring, still nothing else but the 
old Papal and Imperial organization which was con- 
cluded to be condemned long ago; and over this 
flooring, in full march to and fro, populations who 
believe neither in Papacy nor in Empire ! Or let us 
look nearer home ! Was there ever a time when 
Britain contained within it a greater mass of esoteric 
opinion at variance with existing profession and 
practice — when, if the entire population, and espe- 
cially the leading men in it, were polled on oath as 
to their beliefs on matters most fundamental, a 
greater crowd would have to walk to the farther end ? 
It is not only our " representative institutions " that 
are at present on trial. 

Now, as all this has been represented in some 
degree in our popular literature, so it has been 
represented, perhaps most distinctly of all, in our 



REALISM IN RECENT NOVELS. 257 

literature of prose fiction. It is in the nature of this 
species of literature, as I have already said, to take 
a more powerful hold than Verse can do of those 
eddies of current fact and opinion, as distinct from 
the steadier undercourse of things, which, in the 
language of those who look more to the eddies than to 
the undercurrent,, constitute a social crisis ; and, if so, 
then, whether in attending to the eddies, or in trying 
to dive, with epic Verse, down to the undercurrent, 
the Novel of the present has and may have plenty of 
work. My acquaintance with the British novels of 
the last ten years is not sufficiently detailed, to make 
me sure that I can indicate all the tendencies of our 
novel-writing discernible since the time when Dickens 
and Thackeray were in divided possession of the field, 
or even that I can cite the instances that would best 
illustrate the tendencies which I do indicate ; but, 
with allowance for these defects, the following ob- 
servations may pass as true : — 

(] .) In the first place, and generally, I think it is 
to be perceived that of late- — and this to a great 
extent from the influence of Mr. Thackeray's ex- 
ample — there has been a growth among our novel- 
writers of a wholesome spirit of Realism. To 
borrow a phrase from a kindred art, a spirit of con- 
scious Pre-Uaphaelitism has invaded this species of 
s 



258 BRITISH NO VELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

literature. Not that here, any more than in our 
metrical poetry, or in the art of painting itself, the 
practice of those special merits which are now 
signalized by the term Pre-Raphaelitism is new. 
As there were painters who painted truly, minutely, 
and carefully before Pre-Raphaelitism was heard of ; 
as Wordsworth long ago preached a revolution in 
Poetry akin to that which the Pre-Raphaelites have 
advocated in painting; and as Crabbe practised 
long ago in his verse a Pre-Raphaelitism of the 
harder sort — so among our novelists there have 
never been wanting examples of the most persevering 
and painstaking accuracy. Richardson, Fielding, 
and Miss Austen certainly painted from the life. Of 
late, however, there seems to have been, among our 
practitioners of the novelist's art, a more general 
and conscious cultivation of the virtue inculcated in 
Pre-Raphaelitism — shown, first, in the more resolute 
and careful attention of novelists to facts and charac- 
ters lying within the range of their own easy observa- 
tion ; secondly, in a disposition to go in search of facts 
and characters lying somewhat beyond that range, 
as painters carry their easel into unfamiliar localities ; 
and, thirdly, in a greater indifference to traditional 
ideas of beauty, and an increased willingness to 
accept, as worthy of study and representation, facts 



REALISM IN RECENT NOVELS. 259 

and objects accounted common, disagreeable, or even 
painful. In illustration, I may refer again to the 
representations of previously unexplored tracts of 
provincial English scenery and life in the novels of 
Miss Bronte, Mrs, Gaskell, Miss Mulock and others — 
to the minute speciality with which in these novels 
physiognomies and places are described ; the range 
which they take among the different professions, 
crafts, and classes of society, as each possessing its 
peculiar habits and cast of thinking ; and the use in 
them all, when occasion serves, of the local dialect 
or of racy provincialisms. It is as if, proceeding on 
the theory that the British Novel, in its totality, 
should be a Natural History of British life, indivi- 
dual novelists were acting farther on the principle 
of subdivision of labour, and working out separately 
the natural histories of separate counties and 
parishes. With Thackeray presiding in the centre, as 
director of the metropolitan museum, and observer- 
in-chief of the Middlesex district, though with the 
liberty of an excursion hither and thither as he 
chooses, there are scores of others at work gathering 
facts specially in Berkshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, 
&c, some of them with the talent of accomplished 
masters in the whole field of the science. Sir Bulwer 
Lytton has not disdained in his more recent novels 
S2 



260 BRITISH NO VE LISTS SINCE SCO TT. 

to ply the functions of a quiet naturalist; and at 
this moment readers are hailing the advent of a 
new artist of the Real school, in the author of 
Adam Bede. 

In that kind of Natural History, however, which 
may thus form the business of the Novel, a larger 
proportion of the phenomena are phenomena purely 
of the present than in Natural History proper. The 
mineralogy, the botany, the zoology of Britain, or 
of its districts, are tolerably constant from year to 
year, so that labourers in these departments apply 
their successive efforts to an accumulation already 
nearly fixed ; and even in the more varying annual 
meteorology the variations from year to year are not 
so great as they seem. In those facts, on the other 
hand, to which the Novelist with analogous aims has 
to direct his attention, the rate of vicissitude is 
rapid. Human nature comes down the same in its 
essentials ; customs and institutions are also perpe- 
tuated from generation to generation ; but over this 
tolerably solid basis there rolls in every generation an 
assemblage of facts, psychological and political, held 
for the meantime in vital solution and suspense, 
as the immediate element in which the generation 
breathes, though soon also to fall down as sediment, 
a thin additional layer to the stratification foregone. 



REALISM IN RECENT NO VELS. 261 

Yet, as we are now regarding the Novel, it is precisely 
to these purely contemporary facts — these " humours" 
of the present, as Ben Jonson used to call them — 
that the Novelist is supposed to owe his closest 
attention. It is the tendency of Realistic art — as 
commonly denned, at all events — to direct attention 
very particularly to all such circumstances of con- 
temporary interest. Hence, to the full extent to 
which the operation of this kind of Naturalism in art 
has prevailed in British novel-writing during the 
last ten years, we observe an influx into British 
novels of those very sorts of circumstance which the 
decad itself has so plentifully generated. Not only 
have the actual movements and occurrences in 
Europe during these ten years — the Parisian Revo- 
lution of 1848, the Hungarian and Italian wars, the 
Crimean war, &c. — served as definite events with 
which to associate fictitious incidents ; but there has 
been a determination also to ideal incidents and 
situations of the order of those historically recent — 
political conspiracies, club-meetings, strikes in the 
manufacturing districts, mill-riots, &c. ; while, as 
additions to the novelist's traditionary stock of ideal 
characters, we have had the Socialist, the Bed Re- 
publican, the Foreign Refugee, the Government Spy, 
the young Chartist Orator, the Emancipated Woman, 



262 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

and the like. In especial, within Britain, there has 
been a determination to make representatives of all 
classes of clergymen and of all religious creeds sit 
for their photographs in Novels — the Jesuit priest, 
the Roman Catholic pervert, the High-Church par- 
son, the Broad-Church parson, the Low-Church 
parson, Curates of all the varieties, the Dissenting 
Preacher, the Methodist, the Unitarian, the Philo- 
sophical Sceptic, the Spiritualist, the Positivist, and 
even the Mormonite. In proof of the tendency of 
the Novel thus to pluck its materials out of the 
most characteristic and recent facts of the political 
and speculative imbroglio of the time, it is enough 
to recollect again the later novels of Thackeray 
and Sir Bulwer Lytton, or any of Kingsley's, Mrs. 
GaskelTs, or Miss Bronte's. If the Beal is to be 
represented in Novels, are not Puseyism, Socialism, 
Positivism, &c. among the last buddings of the Real ? 
Deep, indeed, in the present time, might the art of 
the Realist go, if the Realist had courage to be what 
he pretends. With all our professions of representing 
what is exactly as it is, do we not as yet, Novelists 
and all of us, keep cunningly near the surface ? 

(2.) It is impossible, however, for the Novelist or 
for any other artist to limit himself to the mere 
function of representing what he sees. However dis- 



NOVELS OF PURPOSE. 263 

passionate his mind, however determined he may be 
to regard the facts aronnd him as so many objects to 
be observed, studied, represented, and nothing more, 
there will always be more or less of purpose blended 
with the representation. All creations of poetic art, 
nay even all transcripts from nature by the his- 
torian, inasmuch as they are actuated by some mood 
or state of mind, have doctrine or purpose worked 
into them, and may on due analysis be made to 
yield it. The very choice of such and such facts to 
be represented, to the exclusion of others, is a 
manifestation of purpose, of preference, of moral 
intention. " When we would philosophise, we phi- 
losophise ; when we refuse to philosophise, then also 
in that very thing we philosophise ; always and 
necessarily we do philosophise." There is evidently 
room, however, for large gradation in this respect, 
in the interval between those novels and poems which, 
being constructed as far as may be on the principle 
of pure representation, have their purpose involved 
and buried in the fact that they are necessarily 
allegories of the mind, or of some portion or phase 
of the mind, that produced them, and those other 
novels and poems, frequent in every time, which 
avow a didactic aim. To these last in a more special 
sense, may be given the name, Novels or Poems of 



264 BRITISH NO VELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

Purpose. Now, it is in accordance with what has 
been said concerning the state of Britain and of 
Europe during the last ten years, that the propor- 
tion of Novels of such a kind — -Novels made in the 
service not of " contemporary fun " merely, but also 
of contemporary earnest — should have been on the 
increase. Such, at all events, has been the fact ; 
and so in addition to the increase and extension of 
a persevering spirit of realism, we have to report, as 
characteristic of British novel-writing recently and 
at present, a great development of the Novel of 
Purpose. 

Not only, for example, have we had novels repre- 
senting duly, as interesting phenomena of the time, 
Chartism, Socialism, &c, in the sphere of secu- 
lar politics, and Anglo-Catholicism, Evangelicism, 
Broad Church, &c, in the sphere of ecclesiastical 
opinion ; we have also had novels in which the doc- 
trines distinguished by these, or by other names, 
have been either inculcated, or satirized and repro- 
bated, separately or jointly — Roman Catholic novels, 
Anglo-Catholic novels, Evangelical novels, Broad- 
Church novels, Christian Socialist novels, Tempe- 
rance novels, Woman's Rights novels, &c. Hardly 
a question or doctrine of the last ten years can be 
pointed out that has not had a novel framed in its 



NO VELS OF P URPOSE. 265 

interest, positively or negatively. To a great extent 
tales and novels now serve the purpose of pam- 
phlets. There are, of course, all varieties of merit 
in such novels, according to the nature of the doc- 
trine propounded, and the depth of humanity and 
power of imagination allied with the special belief. 
In some cases, the story is made so mechanically to 
the order of the dogma, and by a person of such 
shallow and narrow sympathies, and so destitute 
both of knowledge and of poetic genius, that the 
result is but a lifeless sequence of silly incidents, or 
a fierce polemical tirade. Illustrations of an opposite 
kind, exhibiting liberality of sentiment and genius 
naturally poetical powerfully at work under the 
inspiration of strong speculative convictions of a 
general order, and even of precise conclusions on 
current social questions, are to be found, I believe, 
in novels put forth from very different quarters of 
the theological and political world, but nowhere so 
conspicuously as in those of Mr. Kingsley. 

By far the highest class of recent novels of pur- 
pose have been some which might be recognised by 
themselves, as constituting a peculiar group in the 
variety mentioned, under the name of the Art and 
Culture Novel, in our classification of British Novel- 
ists since Scott, and then spoken of as comparatively 



266 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

rare among us. The novels I mean are those 
which, concerning themselves or not, in a dogmatic 
manner, with the specialities of present political or 
ecclesiastical controversy, and being usually indeed 
the productions of minds not disposed to over-esti- 
mate such specialities, even when they artistically 
deal with them, address themselves rather to that 
deeper question of fundamental faith as against 
fundamental scepticism, which is proclaimed every- 
where as the one paramount fact of the age — em- 
bodying certain views on this question in the 
supposed education of an imaginary hero, or of 
several imaginary personages together, who pass 
through various intellectual stages to attain one that 
is final. In all novels whatsoever, of course, the hero 
passes through a series of mental stages, the usual 
goal or consummation being an all- con soling, all- 
illuminating marriage. Bat in the Art and Culture 
novel, as I consider it, the design is to represent 
a mind of the thoughtful order, struggling through 
doubt and error towards certainty and truth; and 
the interest arises from the variation given to that 
one text which the poet has thus typically expressed : 

" Though now he serves me but perplexedly, 

Yet will I soon to clearness bring him thorough : 
Knows well the gardener from the greening tree 

That flower and fruit will deck the coming morrow." 



NO VELS OF P URPOSE. 267 

But though this text might be prefixed to all the 
novels of the class now under consideration, the 
interpretations actually given to it in different novels 
of the class are as various as the notions entertained 
by the different writers of novels, as to what consti- 
tutes remediable " perplexity," and as to what may 
be the maximum of attainable " clearness." Let me 
glance at some of the more clearly marked varieties 
in this respect. 

There are, first, those whose notions of the morality 
to be inculcated, of the " clearness " to be attained, 
are moderate. Their reasoning, if it were to be 
articulately expressed, might take some such form as 
this : " Men complain of the doubt and uncertainty 
" by which their thoughts and actions are perplexed ; 
" but, after all, are there not many things suf- 
" ficiently certain, if people would take the 
" trouble to find them out, and enter them in their 
" inventory of ascertained truths ? A man's creed 
" consists and must consist in those things, what- 
" ever they are, which he has no doubt about ; all 
" else is not his creed, but only his wish, his fancy, 
" or an element of alien belief through which he 
" navigates, more or less honestly, and more or less 
" conformably, by the rudder of his own. Accept- 
" ing this definition, and giving no place in one's 



268 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

creed, properly so called, to any proposition that 
could be ranked as dubitable, might not one still 
compose for one's self a very respectable creed by 
simply collecting all the known truths, all the 
clear indubitabilities, within one's reach? One 
might commence, if need were, with the law of 
gravitation ; about which, surely, there exists, 
out of Ireland, no doubt to speak of. On this, 
as a basis, one might pile, without much effort, 
a considerable body of other equally certain 
truths — truths mechanical, truths chemical, truths 
physiological ; nay, it would surely be hard if one 
could not top the pyramid with a number of very 
important truths, rationally or historically ascer- 
tained, relating to man's social connexions, and 
his conduct in life — truths economical and pruden- 
tial, furnished out of individual experience, or out 
of the repertory of the sciences which refer to 
industry and its fruits ; truths political of kindred 
origin ; and such truths ethical as are embodied in 
the time-honoured maxims, i Honesty is the best 
policy,' ( Be just and fear not;' together with 
whatever of more delicate and nicely evolved con- 
viction might form an appropriate apex. This,, 
they say, is an age of intellectual anarchy; but 
• such a complement of ascertained truths is even 



NO VJSLS OF P URPOSE. 269 

" now possible to any man ; and, unless one be all 
" the more exacting in one's demands, and all the 
" more difficult to rule, it is possible that, with 
" such a complement of truths firmly in his posses- 
" sion, he might go through the world steadily, 
" honourably, and usefully. But this possession 
(C is not born with a man ; it has to be acquired. 
" Man comes into the world regardless and un- 
" formed ; he has to lay down in his mind gradually, 
" and one by one, even the fundamental blocks of 
" his belief, and thereon to build whatever may 
" come as superstructure. Even the knowledge of 
" the law of gravitation is not innate in the child, 
" but has to be acquired by painful efforts, and a 
" succession of tumbles. And so with truths of the 
" more complex sciences, and with truths of the 
" moral and social order, the acquisition of which 
fe last, and still more their effective incorporation in 
" the consciousness, so as to become a living and 
(C active faith, are processes extending, in almost 
u every instance, far beyond the early period of life. 
" Now, in so far as the novelist makes it his aim to 
" exhibit, by fictitious examples, this process of the 
" formation of character, or of the culture of the 
" individual by circumstance and by reflection, his 
c( task will consist in nothing less than this — the 



270 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

" conduct of his imaginary hero through his period 
11 of ignorance, empty-mindedness, aimless and unre- 
" gulated impulse, and consequent error, on to that 
" point, where, by the successive strokes upon him 
" of the offended natural laws, the fatigue of his 
" successive buffetings with an element which always 
" throws him back, and perhaps also the fortuitous 
" occurrence of some happy juncture which lets in 
" the light upon him in a sudden gush, and renders 
" his obedience to law thenceforth easier, he comes 
" into effective possession of such a complement of 
" doctrine as, though it may not finish or satisfy 
" him outright, may fit him for good citizenship, 
" and serve him passably through the rest of life. 
" Why this process of imaginary education should 
" so frequently take the form of a love-story, pro- 
" tracted and complicated by oppositions of fate, 
" separations, misunderstandings and even infideli- 
" ties, but ending in a suitable marriage, is obvious 
" enough. Not to mention other reasons, a very large 
" proportion of those peculiar ethical problems the 
" solution of which is necessary to impart something 
" like finality to a man's creed and character, and so 
" to frank him as a full citizen of the body politic, 
" are problems which are supposed to be best stated 
" in the history of a passionate and thwarted love, 



NO VELS OF P URPOSE. 27 1 

' and to receive their solution most naturally at the 
' moment and through the agency of marriage. The 
' most common forms of f perplexity' are such that 
{ the Novelist is only true to nature when he repre- 
' sents the ' perplexity' as vanishing and the ' clear - 
' ness' as coming in the arms of Rosa or Emily. 
' There the long perturbed youth attains to light and 
' calmness ; there he repudiates the doubts and the 
f moral heresies of his bachelorhood, and wonders 
c how he could ever have entertained them ; there 
' he crowns his faith with the articles yet wanting 
1 to it, or conforms to the faith which he finds esta- 
1 Wished. As the ancients said of men when they 
( died, so it may be said of men when they marry, 
1 Abeunt ad plures : f they go over to the majority. ' 
' At this point, therefore, the Novelist in ordinary 
' does well to take leave of them — not only because 
' the interest in them is gone for one half of his 
1 readers, but also because he has led them on to 
' a natural epoch in their existence. If he chooses, 
' however, he may follow them still farther, and 
1 exhibit the process of their education as continued 
' in their new circumstances, on to a second mar- 
' riage or to any other conclusion that he may fix, 
f including death itself." 

It is on the principles so explained that most 



272 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

specimens we have of the peculiar kind of the Art 
and Culture Novel now under consideration are 
consciously or unconsciously constructed. Mr. 
Thackeray, for example, pilots young Pendennis 
past the syren Blanche Amory, and leaves him, 
wiser for his wanderings, in the haven of Laura's 
love. And so, in others of his novels, in so far as he 
intends them to be of the class under notice, the 
scepticism or ignorance or mental perplexity of his 
hero is represented as terminating, and the better 
frame of mind is represented as arriving, in the event 
of marriage — save that (herein redeeming his philo- 
sophy of character from the charge of facility that 
might otherwise attach to it) he is in the habit of 
making the heroes of his former novels reappear in 
their new capacity as married men in his subsequent 
ones, and reappear still fallible and with something 
farther to seek. The scepticism represented as cha- 
racterizing young Pendennis during his period of 
education, and until Warrington and Laura have 
cured him, is, I think, about the extreme, whether 
as regards kind or as regards extent, that is ever 
represented in our recent Art and Culture Novels of 
the more temperate order : — 

" The truth, friend ! " Arthur said impatiently, " where is 
the truth 1 Show it me. That is the question between us. 



REPRESENTA TIONS OF SCEP TIC ISM. 273 

I see it on both sides. I see it on the Conservative side of 
the house, and amongst the Badicals, and even on the Ministe- 
rial benches. I see it in this man, who worships by Act of Par- 
liament, and is rewarded with a silk apron and five thousand 
a-year ; in that man who, driven fatally by the remorseless logic 
of his creed, gives up everything, friends, fame, dearest ties, 
closest intimacies, the respect of an army of churchmen, the 
recognised position of a leader, and passes over, truth-impelled, 
to the enemy, in whose ranks he is ready to serve henceforth 
as a nameless private soldier. I see the truth in that man, 
his brother, whose logic drives him to quite a different con- 
clusion, and who, after having passed a life in vain endeavours 
to reconcile an irreconcilable book, flings it at last down in 
despair, and declares, with tearful eyes and hands up to 
heaven, his revolt and recantation. If the truth is with all 
these, why should I take side with any one of them 1 . . 
Yes ; I am a Sadducee ; I take things as I find them, and the 
world and the acts of parliament of the world as they are, and 
as I intend to take a wife, if I find one — not to be madly in 
love and prostrate at her feet, like a fool — but to be good- 
natured to her and courteous, expecting good-nature and 
pleasant society from her in turn. And so, George, if ever you 
hear of my marrying, depend on it, it won't be a romantic 
attachment on my side ; and if you hear of any good place 
under government, I have no particular scruples that I 
know of which would prevent me from accepting your offer." 
— " O Pen, you scoundrel, I know what you mean," here 
Warrington broke out. 

This, I say, is about the extreme measure and 
nature of the scepticism that is treated in any of the 
novels now under consideration; and Mr. Thackeray 
deserves credit for having so boldly, in a work of 
fiction, grasped so serious a phenomenon. Few of 

T 



274 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

our recent novelists perhaps have been so explicit. 
Yet the novel from which the above quotation is made 
may stand as the type of a class becoming more 
common. As Mr. Thackeray leads Pendennis out 
of the condition of mind so represented on to a final 
condition, in which, though there is no express repu- 
diation of some parts of the foregoing declaration, 
yet there is an infusion of more positive tenets and 
the total spirit is braver and more manly, so, and 
by an analogous process, do other novelists conduct 
their heroes on through a period of listlessness and 
moral aberration to a resting-ground of faith. There 
are, however, sub-varieties of method and of general 
aim. I do not know that we have had any novels 
of this kind written distinctly in the interest of 
that philosophy which abjures all theology whatever, 
regards the theological habit in any form as a vice 
or a weakness, and proclaims it as the highest 
wisdom 

" To apprehend no farther than this world, 
And square one's life according." 

In actual novels, however, confining themselves as 
they usually do to the incidents of a secular life, we 
have, not unfrequently, something tantamount. The 
" perplexity " they represent is the perplexity of the 



RELIGION IN NOVELS. 275 

ordinary struggle with fortune and the ordinary 
weakness and impulsiveness of youth ; and the cor- 
responding " clearness " at the end is the clearness 
of a settled worldly position and a morality suf- 
ficiently disciplined to hold and enjoy it. Most 
frequently, however, there is a certain conventional 
recognition of the theological element; and, as a 
portion of the youth's " perplexity " is represented 
as consisting in his relaxed hold of religious doctrines 
and his relaxed attention to religious observances, so 
in the ultimate " clearness " there is usually involved 
a coming round again at marriage to the forsaken 
creed and the neglected worship. A pew is taken in 
the ivy-clad parish church ; and, while the heroine, 
now the wife, will attend service twice on Sundays, 
the hero, now the husband, will make it his regular 
practice to go at least once. 

Mr. Kingsley and others who might be associated 
with him have taught this peculiar novel of purpose 
a bolder flight. Admitting that there is a definite 
complement of truths relating to human procedure 
which may be ascertained by reason, experience, and 
a scientific study of the natural laws, and admitting, 
moreover, that a man will behave better or worse in 
this world, according as he has made up this secular 
kind of creed well or ill for himself, or has inherited 
t2 



276 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

it in perfect or imperfect condition from those who 
have educated him, they yet maintain the inadequacy 
of any such conceivable complement of prudential or 
ethical truths self-evolved for the full satisfaction 
and regulation of the human being, and the necessity 
of a deeper faith, a faith metaphysical, in which 
these very truths must be rooted ere they can 
function so powerfully as they might, or even retain, 
strictly speaking, any right to this name of " truths" 
under which they announce themselves. To under- 
take the voyage of life with no other outfit than this 
body of so-called secular doctrine, would be at best, 
they hold, to sail in a ship well- trimmed in itself 
and under good sanitary regulation, but with no 
port in view, no compass, no reference to anything 
without the ship, not even to the sea in which it 
floats. Such seamanship as that would be which, 
professed only an attention to the internal economy 
of the ship itself, and a neglect of its relations to the 
very element in which it moved, such, they think, 
would that doctrine of human life be which professed 
to apprehend only within the visible bounds of life 
and to fabricate the final rule out of what might be 
perceptible there. Life is a voyage; the element is 
time ; there is a port in the coming eternity. Nor 
is man left without the necessary knowledge whereby 



RELIGION IN NO VELS. 277 

this voyage is to be governed. Deep in the structure 
of the human mind itself, when it is duly investi- 
gated, there are found certain bonds of evident 
connexion between it and the world of the meta- 
physical ; certain truths which the mind cannot but 
think, without ceasing to be and abnegating the 
possibility of any stroke of truth thereafter ; certain 
principles the conjunction of which makes it mind 
and determines the extent and the mode of its grasp ; 
certain marks, so to speak, of its fracture from the 
body of the unseen universal. Out of the study of 
these, they say, arises Natural Religion — that kind 
of Religion which has always been in the world, and 
always will be in the world, all contrary philosophy 
notwithstanding, so long as the world wheels on its 
axle, bears suffering and sorrow on its bulk, and 
turns its hemispheres alternately to the vaults of the 
stars. But this, they say, is not all. It has not 
been permitted to this world to wheel on in that 
faint kind of light, scarce better than darkness, 
which wells forth from the human mind itself, 
preying eagerly on its own metaphysical roots, and 
carrying in it some few obscure ideas, some con- 
fused Platonic recollections, of the infinity whence 
it feels itself distorn. A Revelation has been given. 
Once and again from the outer realms of mystery 



278 BRITISH NO VE LISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

a great light has struck our wheeling earth — struck 
it till its bosses beamed and glittered. Of old it 
came flutteringly through prophets and scattered 
men of God; last of all and conclusively it came, 
it came at Nazareth. " God, who at sundry times 
and in divers manners spake in time past unto the 
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days 
spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath 
appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made 
the worlds." Yes, "heir of all things, by whom 
also He made the worlds!" Backward from that 
point in the earth's history the light extends, in- 
volving the very beginnings and the offsets ; and 
forward from that point it also extends, suffusing 
itself through all things, and involving the ends and 
the upshots. Let philosophies form and accumulate 
themselves, all will end in Christianity ; let there be 
wars and revolutions, and let states and common- 
wealths rise and succeed each other, all are but 
preparations towards that kingdom of Christ wherein 
all will be included, for all things are His inheritance. 
And so with individual men now ; be they what they 
may, all is incomplete within them, they are not 
fully men, until Christianity has occupied their 
being. This faith may, indeed, exist where it is not 
suspected to be, and it may not be, alas ! where it is 



MR. EINGSLET. 279 

least supposed to be absent ; but be it must wherever 
man is to be essentially man, and life is to be at its 
highest potency. And so, wherever in literature, 
whether in history, in poem, or in novel, life is to be 
represented, and, above all, wherever the scheme is 
to exhibit the formation of character and the pro- 
gress of an individual mind through doubt and 
error to final certainty and truth, this recognition of 
Christianity as the supreme principle ought to be, 
with those who adopt the argument, unremittingly 
and unmistakeably present. 

A while ago, the introduction of such considera- 
tions in connexion with such a form of literature as 
the Novel might have seemed absurdly irrelevant. 
In connexion with Metrical Poetry they might have 
seemed, in virtue of many precedents, relevant 
enough ; but they would have seemed out of rela- 
tion to all or to almost all known precedents in 
modern prose fiction. That this is no longer the 
case is owing to no one more evidently than to 
Mr. Kingsley. Not in that spirit, common enough 
among previous novelists of purpose, which simply 
treated orthodoxy as a part of established social 
propriety, and therefore attributed it to the hero 
or brought the hero over to it, as a matter of 
course, but in a spirit far more resolute and 



280 BRITISH NO VE LISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

thoroughgoing, does he uphold in his novels the 
necessity of Christian purpose. Whatever objections 
may be taken to his method, and whatever may be 
thought of his success, there can be no mistake as to 
his intention. His very rhetoric is surcharged, to 
the extent of a vehement mannerism, with the phrases 
of his Theology ; and there is not one of his novels 
that has not the power of Christianity for its theme. 
In his splendid historical novel of Hypatia we have 
a representation of a mind exercised amid the con- 
flicts of a world all in chaos, with the Goths breaking 
through its old Polytheistic fabric and a vague 
Platonism bidding here and there for the possession 
of its leading Pagan minds, till at length the sole 
refuge is found in the conquering faith of the Chris- 
tians. In his Westward Ho ! the purpose similarly 
is to show how Christianity, in its form of free Eliza- 
bethan Protestantism, lived and worked in the manly 
minds of an age about the manliest that England 
has seen, and inspired them to actions and enter- 
prises the noblest in English history. And so, in 
his tales of present life, he is always fully alive to 
the struggle between belief and unbelief and between 
various forms both of the one and of the other, which 
makes existing society what it is ; and he either 
asserts positively the sole and supreme efficiency of 



" TOM BROWN." 281 

Christianity for the adequate rule of life in these 
latter days as in those that have gone before, exhi- 
biting its applications to what may seem the most 
peculiar contemporary problems, or he suggests the 
same conclusion by the fictitious shipwreck of all 
that cannot, by a due latitude of interpretation, be 
brought within the Christian definition. What Mr. 
Kingsley has done in this respect has been done also 
in a simpler walk of fiction and with reference to 
a more definite order of interests, by the author of 
Tom Brown. Here, in the story of the education 
of an English schoolboy, there is the same argument 
as in Mr. Kingsley's works for the supreme compe- 
tency of Christian principle in the formation of 
character ; and, though the immediate scene is but 
a public school, and the incidents are those of 
schoolboy life, yet, by the ultimate reference of all 
that happens for good in this little world to the 
influence of Dr. Arnold, not only is the extension of 
the argument to society at large irresistibly sug- 
gested, but the argument itself is all the more 
impressively enforced by being associated with the 
memory of the man who was so emphatically its 
representative. Having a basis of historic truth in 
its relation to such a man, enforcing its lesson with 
such direct honesty, and charged in every sentence 



282 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

with the very spirit of English manliness, little 
wonder that the book went straight to the popular 
heart, that its effects on the minds both of boys and 
of parents were immediate, and that the author was 
instantly recognized as a man from whom readers, 
tired of namby-pamby, might expect more books of 
the right Saxon sort. 

Compared, however, with Christianity as usually 
understood among the existing sects, the Christianity 
whose competency to all modern intellectual wants 
and to all modern social problems is thus proclaimed 
by Mr. Kingsley and by others might certainly ap- 
pear to be Christianity with a difference. The con- 
comitants, it is satirically suggested — beer, tobacco, 
the boxing-gloves, athletic exercises in general, and 
a general readiness at all times to resort to the 
knock-down method of action and to fight like a 
genuine John Bull — are not the concomitants recog- 
nized in the usual definitions of Christianity whether 
in the Greek or in the Latin Fathers. " More is 
the pity," reply the teachers who are attacked ; but, 
not shrinking even from the historical question so 
proposed, they cite their proofs that the effective 
Christianity of all times has been of the brave and 
manly and liberal kind which they seek to inculcate, 
and they argue that the Christianity which some of 



MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY. 283 

the sects would substitute for it is but a weak dilu- 
tion of the authentic creed. The Christianity which 
such men as Tertullian, St. Augustine, and Luther 
professed — the Christianity of the days when England 
was England, and Elizabeth sent her Drakes and 
Ealeighs to do English work against the Devil and 
the Spaniard, or Cromwell led his Ironsides to battle 
for the right — this, they say, and not any attenuated 
Christianity, whether of dry modern dogmatists or 
of feeble modern pietists, is the Christianity that 
will still be found capable of all the work, all the 
difficulties, of our own present world, from our busy 
England on through the rest of Europe, and so 
through Asia, Africa, and America, with Australia 
to boot. Taking them at their word, but still with 
an implied jest at the large proportion of the above- 
mentioned concomitants in their representations of 
English Christianity as it might be, the critics have 
goodhumouredly closed the controversy by affixing 
to the doctrine of Mr. Kingsley and his school a 
witty nickname. They have called it the doctrine 
of "a muscular Christianity," and the heroes in 
whom it is embodied in their novels tf muscular 
Christians." There is only about as much justice in 
the nickname as there is in nicknames in general ; 
but it has become current, and the writers at whom 



284 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

it is aimed have too much relish for humour to be 
anxious to protest against it. Indeed, if they were 
in want of a reason for letting it circulate, they 
might find one in an advantage which it might give 
them by way of retort. In the present day, they 
might say with some truth, the alternative with not 
a small number of minds seems to be between this 
school of theirs of " a muscular Christianity " and 
a contemporary school of " nervous Paganism." 
For, side by side with Mr. Kingsley and his school, 
or rather beyond them, and occupying a bleaker and 
more extreme standing-ground on the plain of spe- 
culation, are a body of thinkers — not unrepresented 
either in our literature of prose fiction — whose 
characteristic it is that they also are incessantly 
ruminating the same high problems of the meta- 
physical, without having the privilege of rest in the 
same solution. 

It has long been a subject of remark, and gene- 
rally of complaint, that so much of our Poetry is of 
the " subjective " kind — i. e. representative of the 
passing feelings, phrenzies, doubts, longings and 
aspirations of the minds who are able so to express 
themselves, rather than of the vast world of fact, 
lying fixed, whether in the past or in the present, 
beyond the troubled bounds of the poet's own con- 



POEMS ABOUT POETS. 285 

sciousness. From the time of Byron and Shelley 
we have had a succession of poems exhibiting indi- 
vidual minds of the thoughtful order shattered to 
their very foundations by passion and scepticism, at 
war with all the institutions of society, and bellowing 
to earth and heaven their sense of Nature's cruelty 
and of their own utter wretchedness. Recently 
there has been a farther peculiarity in this kind of 
poetry which has attracted the notice of critics. 
Poets have begun, as if systematically, to make 
imaginary Poets their heroes. On opening a recent 
book of poetry, the chance is that it is a Poet that 
will be found soliloquizing, conversing with his 
friend, watching the moonlight with his mistress, 
or blaspheming his destiny on a bridge at midnight. 
The opportunity so given for ridicule is obvious. 
" Why this perpetual writing about poets ? Is there 
" not the great world of action, from Adam down- 
" wards, to supply themes ? What percentage of 
" the human race would all the poets alive amount 
" to, that the human race is thus called upon so 
" peremptorily to contemplate them and their 
" whistlings ? Does a shoemaker make shoes for 
" himself alone ; or does a painter always paint 
" himself at his easel ? What was poetry meant to 
" be but holding the mirror up to nature ? Why 



286 BRITISH NO VEL1STS SINCE SCOTT. 

" this perpetual holding up of the mirror to the 
" poet's own insignificant physiognomy, with nothing 
" but its wooden unreflecting back to all the leagues 
" of contemporary landscape, and to all the tide of 
" life through six thousand years V Now, though 
there is much natural temptation to such comments, 
they are essentially unfair. That phenomenon of 
intellectual restlessness, which is exhibited over and 
over again in the poems in question, is a phenomenon 
of universal time, intermingled with all that is and 
with all that has been ; and, in exhibiting it, the poet 
is not neglecting the world of past and present fact, 
but is only educing from its multifarious circum- 
stance that which is recurring and fundamental. 
Moreover, though the phenomenon appertains to all 
time, it has so gained in visibility in the present age 
of the world, that it presses more palpably for repre- 
sentation. Is not speculative anarchy proclaimed 
everywhere as the fact of all others most character- 
istic of our time ; and is there not a larger number 
of minds than ever there was before, revolving over 
and over again the same abstract problems, and, 
indeed, debarred by the arrangements of the time 
from any other habitual occupation? If poets, in 
the actual sense, are still but a small minority of the 
body-politic, they are at least on the increase ; and 



NERVOUS PAGANISM. 287 

the class of persons, for whom imaginary poets may- 
stand as representatives and who will read the ima- 
ginary histories of such poets with interest, is a class 
not only widely diffused but also socially authori- 
tative. In short, if a poet is thrown on a " weak 
piping time of peace " what is there for him to repre- 
sent as contemporary save the weakness and the 
piping? 

The same reasoning would apply to the very special 
class of novels which corresponds with the poems in 
view. Such novels are, indeed, as yet rare — Verse 
having hitherto reserved mainly for itself themes so 
high and dangerous. But specimens are not wanting 
of fictitious representations in prose of mental per- 
plexity at its uttermost, not ending in Mr. Kingsley's 
happy solution. Recent works of prose fiction might 
be named in which, as in recent poems, a poet or 
some personage of the purely intellectual class is 
the hero, and the story is that of his progress through 
the very blackness of darkness, with only natural 
reason, or the revelation that can come through 
reason, as his guide. There is the mind preying on 
its own metaphysical roots ; there is the parting, 
piece by piece, with the old hereditary faith, and yet 
all the remaining torture of the ceaseless interroga- 
tion which that faith satisfied ; there are the pangs of 



288 BRITISH NO VELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

love despised or disprized ; there is the burden of sin 
and the alternate sullenness and madness of despair. 
Sometimes the " clearness" is represented as coming, 
and then in one or other of a few well-known forms. 
The happy marriage may be an occasional agency ; 
but, even where it is admitted, its effect is but aux- 
iliary. Sometimes the mind under probation is made 
to ascertain for itself that its perpetual metaphysical 
self-torture, its perpetual labour on questions which 
cannot be answered, is a misuse of its faculties, and 
so to take rest in the philosophic conclusion that 
" man was not born to solve the problem of the uni- 
verse, but to find out where the problem begins, and 
then to restrain himself within the limits of the com- 
prehensible." When this is the solution adopted, 
however, the result is represented as by no means 
the same as in the case previously imagined of a 
mind that has never exercised itself on the problems 
of the supernatural at all, but has secured its com- 
fort from the outset by voting the supernatural to be 
non-extant, and proceeding to pile up, as one's suf- 
ficient creed, a few average certainties of the secular. 
No ; these average certainties are, indeed, more 
eagerly adopted now because they may have been 
neglected heretofore, and a satisfaction is found that 
was not anticipated in science and art and all the 



NER VO US PA GA N~ISM. 289 

multiform use and investigation of the world as it 
is ; but the mind retains in it a touch of " the de- 
monic M to witness to its old wanderings ; it works 
now with a higher and less calculable potency ; 
through the shell of darkness that enspheres the 
visible world, there glimmers the gauzy light of a 
world believed in, though pronounced impenetrable ; 
as the little island of life is tilled and cultivated, it 
is at least still known to be an island, and there is 
still heard in its midmost fields the roar of the sur- 
rounding sea. Or, again, sometimes there is more 
than this merely negative conclusion. The mind in 
its gropings has seized some actual belief, super- 
natural in its reference, which it will not afterwards 
let go, and which anchors it howsoever it ranges ; or 
a dead hand, it may be, seems stretched in one's 
behalf from the world of spirits; or it is as when 
Dante walked on earth and there hovered ever before 
him, interpretative of all around and apocalyptic of 
all beyond, the vision of his beatified Beatrice. 
Generally, too, as a part of one or other of these 
solutions, there is an assertion of the sanative virtue 
of action, of the power of work to dispel doubt and 
despair, and to heal a mind fevered by excess of 
speculation. And so at the close, as in Maud, there 
is the glimpse of some enterprise into which the 

u 



290 BRITISH NO VE LISTS SINCE SCO TT. 

mind, recovering its reason, may plunge, and in 
which, though it is lost to view, the fancy may follow 
its beneficent activity. 

" And as months ran on and rumour of battle grew, 
1 It is time, it is time, passionate heart,' said I 
(For I cleaved to a cause that I felt to be pure and true), 
' It is time, passionate heart and morbid eye, 
That old hysterical mock-disease should die.' 
And I stood on a giant deck, and mix'd my breath 
With a loyal people shouting a battle cry, 
Till I saw the dreary phantom arise and fly 
Far into the North, and battle, and seas of death." 

Perhaps, however, the most characteristic of the 
special class of fictions which we have been describing 
are those in which " clearness " is not represented 
as coming at all, but which confine themselves merely 
to a statement of the question. The perpetual 
knocking at the unopened door — such is their image 
of human life. This is Nervous Paganism at its 
uttermost ; and one or two specimens of it in our 
prose -literature, not actually calling themselves 
novels, but really such, might be specified, were it 
not that their authors would feel a reluctance to 
being named. Muscular Pagans would not mind it. 
(3.) In addition to the tendency to a wider and 
more persevering Realism, and also to the marked 
tendency to more of doctrinal and didactic earnest- 



HIGHER POETIC PO WER. 291 

ness in all directions, there may be reported, respect- 
ing our recent and contemporary novel-writing, the 
appearance here and there of more of purely poetic 
aim, and of a larger power and liberty in the ideal. 
While, on the one hand, our novelists are striving- 
after a closer rendering of life as it is throughout all 
ranks of society and all professions, on the other 
hand, we find in some novelists, and sometimes where 
this virtue of Realism exists in high degree, a dispo- 
sition to vindicate for the novel also that right of 
ideality which is allowed to metrical Poetry, and so 
to introduce in their novels incidents, scenes, and 
characters not belonging to the ordinary world, but 
holding their tenure from the sway of phantasy. 
I have already named Mr. Dickens as a novelist 
in whom the poetic capability is strongly developed. 
There are portions also of Miss Bronte's novels where 
the imagination breaks away from social fact and 
exercises itself in visual and other allegories ; and in 
Mr. Kingsley's bold descriptions of scenery, his 
heroic and impassioned conceptions of character, 
and the romantic sequence of his incidents and situ- 
ations, there is as marked an inroad as has been 
made in recent prose fiction into the peculiar domain 
of the Poet. The mere citation of such instances 
will suffice to explain what is meant ; and I would 

u2 



292 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

only observe farther that, as in such novelists there 
is more and more of the higher matter of poetry, so, 
wherever this is the case, their language too assumes 
more and more of the poetical and even of the me- 
trical form. As Mr. Dickens and Mr. Kingsley, for 
example, may be associated, in virtue of much of the 
matter of their writings, with such elder prose-poets 
as Wilson and De Quincey (and these two, it is to be 
remembered, take rank also among our novelists), 
so from their writings, too, passages might be ex- 
tracted which might be read, with scarce an alteration, 
as good unconscious verse. 

There are no symptoms yet that the Novel is 
about to lose its popularity as a form of literature. 
On the contrary, there is every symptom, that in 
one shape or another it will continue to be popular 
for a long time, and that more and more of talent 
will flow into it. The very remarks which we have 
been making as to the recent tendencies and charac- 
teristics of our British novel-writing are proofs to 
this effect. The Novel, we have found, has been 
becoming more real and determinate, in so far as it 
can convey matter of fact, more earnest, in so far as 
it can be made a vehicle for matter of speculation, 
and more conscious, at the same time, of its ability in 



DESIDERATA. 293 

all matter of phantasy. What is this but saying that 
its capabilities have been increasing simultaneously 
as regards each of the three kinds of intellectual 
exercise which make up total literature — History, 
Philosophy, and Poetry ; and what is this again but 
saying, that in future there may be either a greater 
disposition among those who naturally distribute 
themselves according to this threefold classification 
to employ it for their several purposes, or a greater 
desire among those who are peculiarly novelists to 
push its powers in the threefold service ? On such 
a supposition, we may venture, in conclusion, on 
three hopes as to the Novel of the future, corre- 
sponding severally to the three tendencies which 
have been indicated as most conspicuous in the 
Novel of the present : — 

I. In the interest of the Novel considered in its 
relations to History, or as a form of literature repre- 
senting the facts of human life, there might be 
a more general recognition than heretofore, both 
among Novelists and their readers, of the full theo- 
retical capabilities of the Novel, as being the prose 
counterpart of the Epic. In other words, there 
might be more attention among our novelists of real 
life to epic breadth of interest. 

I may illustrate my meaning by a particular 



294 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

instance of the defect I have in view. It will not 
be denied, I think, that, by the conversion of the 
Novel, in the hands of the majority of modern 
novelists, and especially of lady-novelists, into a 
mere love and marriage story, there has been a 
serious contraction of its capabilities. Of Love, as 
an influence in human affairs, it is impossible either 
for History or for Romance to exaggerate the impor- 
tance. Over every portion of human society, from 
the beginning of the world till now, over every little 
hand's- breadth of British or of any other society at 
this moment, there has waved, there is waving, the 
white hand of Aphrodite. And what effects of the 
white hand wherever it waves — what sweet pain, 
what freaks and mischiefs, what trains of wild and 
unforeseen events, what derangements and convul- 
sions, not confined to the spots where they begin, 
but sending forth circles of tremor, which agitate 
all interests, and ripple sometimes to the thrones of 
kings ! Through love, as a portal, man and woman 
both pass, at one point or another, ere they are free 
of the corporation of the human race, acquainted 
with its laws and constitution, and partakers of its 
privileges. That this feeling then, and all that 
appertains to it, should receive large recognition in 
literature, that representations of it should be multi- 



LOVE AXD MARRIAGE XOVELS. 295 

plied, and that histories should be constructed to 
exhibit it, is right and necessary,; nor can any 
history or fiction be accounted a complete rendering 
of all life in which this particular interest is omitted 
or made insignificant. But there are other human 
u interests " — if we may use that hacknied word — 
besides Love and Marriage. There are other deities 
in the Polytheistic Pantheon besides Aphrodite. 
There is Apollo, the physician and artist; there is 
Minerva, the wise and serene ; there is Juno, the 
sumptuous and queenly; there is the red god, 
Mars ; not far off sits green-haired Neptune ; all 
around is Pan, the wood-rover ; and down upon all, 
the resting bolt in his hand, looks the calm and 
great-browed Jove. It was the action and inter- 
action of these deities that, in the Pagan philosophy, 
produced life — Yenus having only her characteristic 
part ; and, if for deities we substitute principles, the 
same is true yet. Exactly, therefore, as, in the 
Homeric Epic, the whole Pantheon was engaged, 
and Yenus appears but now and then to wave her 
hand and have it wounded, so, to constitute a true 
modern epic, there must be the like subordination, 
the like variety. And, indeed, in almost all the 
greater novelists, whether of our own or of other 
countries— Richardson being one of the exceptions — 



206 BRITISH NO VE LISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

and certainly in all the greatest narrative and dra- 
matic poets, this breadth of interest, this ranging of 
the mind over a wide surface of the phenomena of 
human life, has been a conspicuous characteristic. 
In Cervantes we have all Spain to range over. In 
Shakespeare's dramas we have love in abundance, 
and, at least, some thread or hint of love in each ; 
but what a play throughout of other interests, and 
in some how rare the gleam of the white hand amid 
the spears of warriors and the deliberations of 
senates ! So in Scott ; and so in almost every other 
very eminent novelist. That so many of our inferior 
novels now should be love and marriage novels and 
nothing more, arises perhaps from the fact, that the 
novel-reading age in the one sex falls generally 
between the eighteenth and the twenty-fifth year, 
and that, with the other sex, in the present state of 
our social arrangements, the " white hand '.' remains, 
directly or indirectly, the permanent human interest 
during the whole of life. 

II. In the interest of the Novel, considered as a 
vehicle for doctrine, a very considerable influx into 
it both of the speculative spirit and of the best 
results of speculation, is yet to be desired. 

The question of the proper limits within which 
a poet or other artist may seek to inculcate doctrine 



ART AND DOCTRINE. 297 

through his works, is one on which something has 
already been said in connexion with those recent 
novels which we have named Novels of Purpose. 
It is, however, a question, the complete discussion of 
which would involve many farther considerations. 

On the one hand, the popular distaste for works 
of art evidently manufactured to the order of some 
moral or dogma is founded on a right instinct. 
The art of Shakespeare in his dramas, as it is and 
always has been more popular than the art of Ben 
Jonson in his, is also deeper and truer in principle. 
Moreover, it may be said, there is a certain incom- 
patibility between the spirit in which an artist 
proceeds, and the spirit in which a teacher or dog- 
matist ought to proceed, if he is true to his calling. 
It is the supposed essence of a work of art that it 
shall give pleasure ; but perhaps it is the test of 
efficient doctrine that it shall give pain. The artist 
may lawfully aspire to be popular ; the teacher who 
aspires to popularity does so at his peril. It might 
be a true testimony to the power of an artist that 
the crowd were crowning him with laurel in the 
market-place ; but respecting a moralist, or spiritual 
reformer, a truer testimony might be that they were 
taking up stones to stone him. Works of art and 
imagination are such that those who produce them 



298 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

may live by their sale, and not necessarily be untrue 
to their function ; the very worst feature in our 
modern organization of literature is that so many 
literary men must live by the sale of doctrine. 
When doctrine has to be sold to enable its producer 
to go on producing more, there is a grievous chance 
that the doctrine last sold, and the farther doctrine 
in preparation will, more or less consciously, be of 
a kind to be saleable. True, the labourer even in 
doctrine is worthy of his hire; but he will labour 
perhaps better if he is in circumstances not to 
require any. In the ancient Greek world it was 
the men who were called Sophists who took fees for 
their teaching; the philosopher Socrates had his 
bread otherwise. He earned his bread by sculpture, 
of the quality of which we do not hear much ; by 
his philosophy, of the quality of which we can 
judge for ourselves, all that he got from the public 
in his life was a cup of hemlock. But, though we 
thus regard it as the distinction between the true 
Greek philosophers and the contemporary Sophists 
that the Sophists taught for hire and the philoso- 
phers gratuitously, we do not extend the inference 
to the Greek dramatists. They probably expected 
to be paid handsomely, as well as to be applauded, 
for their dramas ; and yet their dramas were such as 



ART AND DOCTRINE. 299 

we see. And so, in the case -of the modern novel, 
what chance is there for the novelist of attaining his 
legitimate end as an artist, that of communicating 
and diffusing pleasure, if he aims also at reforming 
society by a strenuous inculcation of doctrine, which, 
in so far as it is good and calculated for the exigency, 
ought almost necessarily to irritate ? 

Now, without waiting to detect a certain amount 
of fallacy which mingles with the general truth of 
such an argument, it might be enough to fall back 
on the consideration already adduced — that every 
artist, poet, or novelist is also a thinker whether he 
chooses or not. The imagination is not a faculty 
working apart ; it is the whole mind thrown into 
the act of imagining ; and the value of any act of 
imagination, therefore, or of all the acts of imagina- 
tion of any particular mind, will depend on the 
total strength and total furnishing of the mind, 
doctrinal contents and all, that is thrown into this 
form of exercise. Every artist is a thinker, whether 
he knows it or not ; and ultimately no artist will be 
found greater as an artist than he was as a thinker. 
The novelist chooses a certain portion of life to be 
imaginatively represented ; well, there is latent doc- 
trine in the very choice. He is the providence of 
the mimic world he has framed ; well, he must 



300 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

conduct it, consciously or unconsciously, according 
to some philosophy of life. He makes his characters 
reason and act in different situations and in modes 
calling for approbation or reprobation; well, he is, 
in spite of himself, a good or a bad moral casuist. 
Now, to the extent to which these obvious facts 
carry us, is it not to be wished that our novelists 
brought to their business a fair amount of scientific 
capital, a fair amount of acquaintance with the best 
thoughts that may be current on the subjects of 
greatest interest and importance ? Is the wish un- 
necessary ? It hardly appears to be so. If there 
is any kind of literary attempt to which a mind 
empty of all knowledge is apt nevertheless to think 
itself quite competent, is it not to writing a novel ? 
And what havoc, in our actual novels, of the most 
simple and certain principles ! The very element 
in which the novelist works is human nature; yet 
what sort of Psychology have we in the ordinary 
run of novels ? A Psychology, if the truth must be 
spoken, such as would not hold good in a world of 
imaginary cats, not to speak of men — impossible 
conformations of character; actions determined by 
motives that never could have determined the like ; 
sudden conversions brought about by logical means 
of such astounding simplicity that wonder itself 



ART AXD DOCTRINE. 301 

is paralyzed in contemplating them ; chains of 
events defying all laws of conceivable causation ! 
How shaky also the Political Economy and the 
Social Science of a good many of our novelists — 
sciences in the matter of which they must work, if not 
also in that of some of the physical sciences, in fram- 
ing their fictitious histories ! Before novels or poems 
can stand the inspection of that higher criticism 
which every literary work must be able to pass ere 
it can rank in the first class, their authors must be 
at least abreast of the best speculation of their time. 
Not that what we want from novelists and poets is 
farther matter of speculation. What we want from 
them is matter of imagination ; but the imagination 
of a well furnished mind is one thing, and that of 
a vacuum is another. Respecting some kinds of 
novels — those included, for example, in the more 
profound order of what we have called novels of 
purpose — our demands might be higher. That a 
writer may be fitted to frame imaginary histories 
illustrating the deeper problems of human education, 
and to be a sound casuist in the most difficult ques- 
tions of human experience, it is necessary that he 
should bring to his task not only an average 
acquaintance with the body of good current doctrine, 
but also an original speculative faculty. In such 



302 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

cases, the desirable arrangement might be either 
that our novelists were philosophers, or that philo- 
sophers were our novelists. 

III. In the interest of the Novel, considered as 
a variety of general Poetry, there might be a more 
decided assertion of its competency for the higher 
as well as for the lower exercises of the poetic faculty, 
of its fitness for representations of the grand, the 
elemental, the ideal, as well as for representations 
of the socially minute, varying, and real. In other 
words, there might, with advantage, be a protest, 
within certain limits, and especially at present, 
against the exclusive practice of what is called the 
novel of social reality. I have so often touched on 
this topic that it may be well here somewhat to vary 
my language in returning to it. Several times I 
have used the word " elemental" as synonymous, or 
nearly so, with the word "ideal," and as perhaps 
less objectionable, inasmuch as it avoids the notion 
of opposition to the " real" which this latter word 
is apt to suggest, and which is not intended. Let 
me now, therefore, confine myself to that word, and 
explain more distinctly what is meant by it. 

The old doctrine of the Four Elements is now 
naught in Science; but there is a lingering validity 
in it, in respect that to the merely intuitive eye the 



THE "ELEMENTAL." 303 

four elements recognised in it still seem to compose 
the totality of nature, and yet to be distinct among 
themselves. There is the brown and stable Earth, 
mineral or organic; round its massive bulk roars 
and surges the fluid element of Water, here collected 
in oceans, there distributed in streams ; over Earth 
and Water alike blows the fickle element of Air, 
deepening, as the eye ascends, from invisible trans- 
parency to the still blue of the heavenly dome; and 
finally, scattered through all, is the fiercer element 
of Fire, here tonguing over the earth wherever it 
may be kindled, there flashing through the ether, 
and, high over all, as natural vision fancies, col- 
lected permanently into points and orbs. Moreover, 
this distribution of external nature by the eye sinks 
inward into the mind, becomes a mode of universal 
thought, and affects our language respecting mind 
itself. Some souls, solid and strong, seem to have an 
affinity with the earth ; some, more fluid, with the 
water ; some, soft and supersubtle, with the air ; 
some, hot and terrible, with the fires and the light- 
nings; while some there are — earthy-fiery, fiery- 
aerial, and the like — whose affinities must be 
represented as compound. Nay, more, it will be 
found that the element to which any mind is referred 
by those observing its operations, is also generally 



304 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

that for the sensible circumstance of which it shows, 
in its fancies, a marked affection. Shelley might 
be classed as an aerial spirit with a touch of fainter 
fire; and the circumstance with which Shelley's 
poetry abounds is that of Meteorology. 

So much for the word u elemental" as it might 
be afforded to us out of the obsolete, but still signi- 
ficant, doctrine of the Four Elements. But we need 
not associate the word with any such doctrine. The 
elemental in nature or in life may be defined as 
consisting simply of those objects or phenomena in 
each which are recognised as most large, compre- 
hensive, primitive, impressive, and enduring. There 
is an elemental of the physical world, and there is 
an elemental of the moral world. The elemental in 
the physical world consists of the more massive and 
enduring phenomena of that world, of those larger 
sights and sounds of nature that impressed men 
primevally, and that continue to impress powerfully 
now — the wide expanse of earth, barren with moor 
or waving with corn and forest ; the sea restless to 
the horizon, and rolling its waves to the beach ; the 
gusts of the raging tempest; the sun majestic in 
the heavens, and the nocturnal glory of the stars : 
the clouds, the rains, the rocks, the vales, the 
mountains. To these more massive and permanent 



THE "ELEMENTAL." 305 

objects or phenomena of the physical world there 
correspond objects or phenomena of the moral 
world, distinguished from the rest as also more 
massive and enduring. Birth, Life, Death ; Labour, 
Sorrow, Love, Kevenge ; the thought of the Whence, 
the thought of the Why, the thought of the 
Whither — these, in the moral world, are the con- 
siderations that are elemental. Men of old revolved 
them ; we revolve them ; those who come after us 
will revolve them. As in the physical world there 
are infinite myriads of phenomena, complex and 
minute, aggregated on the basis of the elemental 
and into which the elemental may be decomposed, 
so on these fundamental feelings, facts, and thoughts 
of the moral world are all the minuter facts of social 
experience piled, and over these as their basis they 
roll in varying whirl. These are the generalities ; 
the rest are the minutiae. Now to the hundred 
definitions that have been given of genius, let this 
one more be added — that that soul is a soul of 
genius which is in affinity with the elemental in 
nature and in life, and which, by the necessity of 
its constitution, tends always from the midst of the 
complex and minute to the simple and the general. 

I know not where the difference between the 
purest form of the passion for the elemental on the 

x 



306 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

one hand, and the most prurient form of affection 
for mean social detail on the other is better repre- 
sented than in the contrast between the Archangels 
and Mephistopheles in the Prologue to Goethe's 
" Faust." The Prologue opens with a hymn of the 
three Archangels, singing, first severally and then 
together, before the throne of Deity : — 

" RAPHAEL. 

In chorus with each kindred star 
The Sun sends forth his ancient song, 
And on his path prescribed from far, 
In thunder going, rolls along : 
The Angels gather strength, beholding, 
Though none their substance fathom may ; 
The mystic works of Thy upholding 
Are lordly as on Time's first day. 

GABRIEL. 

And swift and swift, all thought outstripping, 
Wheels round the pomp of Earth in sight, 
Its daily gleam of Eden dipping 
In deep and horror-teeming night : 
The sea, in mighty billows dashing, 
Up-foams against the rock's deep base ; 
And rock and sea, together crashing. 
Whirl ceaseless in the starry race. 

MICHAEL* 

And loud storms roar, their warfare waging 
From sea to land, from land to sea ; 
And fashion round it, in their raging,, 
A girdle woven wondrously : 



THE "ELEMENTAL." 307 

There flames the flash of desolation, 
To clear the coming thunder's way : 
Yet, Lord, we have in veneration 
The gentle going of thy day. 

THE THREE. 

The Angels gather strength, beholding, 
Though none Thy substance fathom may ; 
And all the works of Thy upholding 
Are lordly as on Time's first day." 

As the song ends, Mephistopheles comes forward; 
and mark, in contrast, the tenor of his speech : — 

" Of suns and worlds deuce one word can / gabble ; 
I only know how men grow miserable. 
The little god of earth is still the same old clay, 
And is as odd this hour as on Creation's day. 
Better somewhat his situation, 

Hadst Thou not given him that same light of inspiration : 
Eeason he calls % and uses 't so that he 
Grows but more beastly than the very beasts to be. 
He seems to me, begging your Grace's pardon, 
Like one of those long-legg'd things in a garden, 
That fly about, and hop and spring, 
And in the grass the same old chirrup sing. 
Would I could say that here the story closes ! 
But in all sorts of dirt they thrust their noses." 

These are the two moods. They reproduce them- 
selves in literature. In all the greater literature 
of the world, from Homer and the Greek Drama 
downwards, there is heard the tone of the Elemental 
song. Nor need it be absent in our Prose Fiction. 



308 BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT. 

No more than our metrical Poetry must this form 
of literature be permitted to degenerate into a 
ceaseless variation of the speech of Mephistopheles, 
that men are as miserable as ever and that the world 
is all in a mess. It may be that the representation 
of social reality is, on the whole, the proper business 
of the Novel; but even in the representation of 
social reality the spirit may be that of the far- 
surveying and the sublime. I believe, however, that 
there may be vindicated for the literature of prose 
phantasy the liberty of an order of fiction different 
from the usual Novel of Social Reality, and ap- 
proaching more to what has always been allowed 
in metrical poesy, and that, accordingly, those 
occasional prose fictions are to be welcomed which 
deal with characters of heroic imaginary mould, 
and which remove us from cities and the crowded 
haunts of men. 



THE END. 



b>\ 



K. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL. 



% 



* A 

1 B a 










*£• 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. ' 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Jan. 2009 



I x o 

(724) 

^ A 



* ■§ 



Neutralizing agent: Magnesium oxide 
Treatment Date: Jan. 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16™** 
(724)779-2111 


















-^ 
•^ %? 



} «i^ > s \ • *- ^ " 













-* .^ 
















^. S' 









\* 



,5 ^ 



y 






^^ 



^o 1 






<> ' f -K 






*>. 



<p \ x 












LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



Hi 




013 975 441 4 



1 




